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popocales.

Headword: 
popocales.
Principal English Translation: 

Russet-naped Wood-Rail, a bird (see Hunn, attestations); the word might seem to have a Hispanized orthography (perhaps originally, popoca-calli, smoking house) but sources emphasize that popocales is the sound the bird makes, "po-po-kalli-kalli" (an onomatopoetic word)

Attestations from sources in English: 

PŌPOCALES, Russet-naped Wood-Rail (Aramides albiventris) [FC: 25 Pôpocales] “Its home is in the forest. As for its being called popocales, it speaks so. Always in the twilights and a dawn, it says popocales. And it frequents the canyons; it lives there in [the province of] Toztlan [and] Catemaco. It eats fish. It is the size of a duck, only a little taller.” Martin del Campo suggests that this is some species of rail (Rallidae). The description fits the Russet-naped Wood-Rail.
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); Rafael Martín del Campo, “Ensayo de interpretación del Libro Undecimo de la Historia General de las Cosas de Nueva España de Fray Bernardino de Sahagún – 11 Las Aves (1),” Anales del Instituto de Biología Tomo XI, Núm. 1 (México, D.F., 1940); 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analysis here also appearing in E. S. Hunn, "The Aztec Fascination with Birds: Deciphering Sixteenth-Century Sources," unpublished manuscript, 2022, cited here with permission.

For an image of this bird, see the Florentine Codex, Book 11, folio 25r.
Available at Digital Florentine Codex/Códice Florentino Digital, edited by Kim N. Richter and Alicia Maria Houtrouw, "Book 11: Earthly Things", fol. 25r, Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/11/folio/25r/images/1e933e35-0... Accessed 16 October 2025.

themes: 
Animals, Bugs, Insects, Reptiles, Fish, etc.
Sensory Perception (sound, smell, etc.)