tlacahuilotl.

TLĀCA-HUILO-TL, Rock Pigeon (Columba livia) [FC: 51 Tlacavilotl] “It is large, round, ball-like. Some are ashen, some chalky, some dark green, some smoky, some tawny. It is really much like the Castilian uilotl.” Martin del Campo identifies this as the [Common] Ground Dove (Columbina passerina). However, that dove is small, like the Inca Dove, and the highly variable plumage described suggests this is most likely the introduced Rock Pigeon, feral descendants of the “Castilian uilotl.”
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analysis here also appearing in E. S. Hunn, "The Aztec Fascination with Birds: Deciphering Sixteenth-Century Sources," unpublished manuscript, 2022, cited here with permission.

See the Digital 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. 55r, Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/11/folio/55r/images/75ca08d1-e... Accessed 19 October 2025.