totozcatleton.

Headword: 
totozcatleton.
Principal English Translation: 

perhaps the Broad-tailed Hummingbird (see Hunn, attestations)

Orthographic Variants: 
tozcatleton, tozcatle
Attestations from sources in English: 

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analysis here also appearing in E. S. Hunn, "The Aztec Fascination with Birds: Deciphering Sixteenth-Century Sources," unpublished manuscript, 2022, cited here with permission.

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