chicuatli.

See an image that represents chicuatli in the Visual Lexicon of Aztec Hieroglyphs, ed. Stephanie Wood (Eugene, Ore.: Wired Humanities, 2020-present).

For a painting of the bird, go to the Digital Florentine Codex:
Available at Digital Florentine Codex/Códice Florentino Digital, edited by Kim N. Richter and Alicia Maria Houtrouw, "Book 11: Earthly Things", fol. 50v, Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/11/folio/50v/images/0 Accessed 18 October 2025.

CHĪCUAH-TLI, Barn Owl (Tyto alba) [FC: 46 Chiquatli] “It has thick feathers, eyes like spindle whorls, a curved bill. It is unkempt, fluffy. Its feathers are ashen, blotched like a quail’s. It is round-headed, stubby-tailed, round-winged. The eyes shine by night; they are weak by day. It is a night traveler which sees at night; it feeds, it lives by hunting…. It eats mice [and] lizards. It claws one.” No doubt this is the Barn Owl. The Codex lists as synonyms TAPAL-CATZOTZON-QUI [FC: 47 Tapalcatzotzonqui: “It is the same as the Barn Owl. It is named tapalcatzotzonqui because its call is as if one struck pot sherds or rattled them. Thus does it sound.”]. See also CHĪCH-TLI [FC: 47 Chichtli] “is the same as the Barn Owl.” The first synonym is a neat characterization of a common Barn Owl vocalization.
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analysis here also appearing in E. S. Hunn, "The Aztec Fascination with Birds: Deciphering Sixteenth-Century Sources," unpublished manuscript, 2022, cited here with permission.

Cuix ticneltoca in temictli in Peyotl, Ololiuhqui, Tletl, Tecolotl, Chiquatli. coatl nozo itla oc centlamantli quimoteotiaya in mocolhuan huehuetque. = Do you believe in dreams, peyote, ololiuhqui, fire, owls, barn owls, snakes or some other thing your grandfathers the ancients used to worship?
Bartolomé de Alva, A Guide to Confession Large and Small in the Mexican Language, 1634, eds. Barry D. Sell and John Frederick Schwaller, with Lu Ann Homza (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999), 91.

Another name for the barn or screech owl is chichtli according to Sahagún.
Florentine Codex (1950–1982), Book 11, 47.

Cuix ticneltoca in temictli in Peyotl, Ololiuhqui, Tletl, Tecolotl, Chiquatli. coatl nozo itla oc centlamantli quimoteotiaya in mocolhuan huehuetque. = As creydo en sueños, en el Peyote, Ololiuque, en el fuego, en los Buhos, Lechusas, ò Culebras, &c. O en otros abusos que tuvieron tus antepasados.
Bartolomé de Alva, A Guide to Confession Large and Small in the Mexican Language, 1634, eds. Barry D. Sell and John Frederick Schwaller, with Lu Ann Homza (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999), 90–91.

Cuix oticmotetzahui, in chiquauhtli, in chixtli, in yepatl? = Tubiste aguero en el chiqualote, y en un cierto paxaro griton, y en el Zorrillo?
Antonio Vázquez Gastelu, Arte de lengua mexicana (Puebla de los Angeles, México: Imprenta Nueva de Diego Fernández de León, 1689), 34r.