totozcatleton.

TOTOZCATLE-TON/TOZCATLE-TON/TOZCATLE, perhaps Broad-tailed Hummingbird (Selasphorus platycercus) and/or Lucifer’s Hummingbird (Calothorax lucifer) [FC: 25 Totozcatleton and FC: 24 Tozcatle] “It is ashen, ash-colored. At the top of its head and the throat, its feathers are flaming like fire. They glisten, they glow.” Martin del Campo identified this bird as the Ruby-throated Hummingbird (Archilocus colubris). This is unlikely, as the Ruby-throated Hummingbird is a winter visitor to Mexico and most individuals at that season are females or immatures, lacking the colors described. Several other resident species have “fiery” throats, but green crowns, notably, Broad-tailed and Lucifer’s Hummingbirds, which might be so named.
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analysis here also appearing in E. S. Hunn, "The Aztec Fascination with Birds: Deciphering Sixteenth-Century Sources," unpublished manuscript, 2022, cited here with permission.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 an image of this bird in 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.