IZTAC-TLOH-TLI, literally, “white falcon,” Prairie Falcon (Falco mexicanus) [FC: 44 Iztac tlhotli] “Its name is sacre . It does not hunt ducks much ; it wars upon hares, rabbits, turkeys, and chickens. It is called “white falcon” because its feathers are pale striped with white. It always hunts … by day…. Its legs are yellow.” Perhaps yet another name for the prototypical falcon, the Prairie Falcon.
Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain; Book 11 – Earthly Things, no. 14, Part XII, eds. and transl. Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble (Santa Fe and Salt Lake City: School of American Research and the University of Utah, 1963); and, with quotation selections, synthesis, and analysis here also appearing in E. S. Hunn, "The Aztec Fascination with Birds: Deciphering Sixteenth-Century Sources," unpublished manuscript, 2022, cited here with permission.
See the Florentine Codex for a painting of this bird:
Available at Digital Florentine Codex/Códice Florentino Digital, edited by Kim N. Richter and Alicia Maria Houtrouw, "Book 11: Earthly Things", fol. 48v, Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/11/folio/48v/images/ce983b42-2... Accessed 18 October 2025.