tocuilcoyotl.

TOCUIL-COYŌ-TL, Sandhill Crane (Antigone canadensis) [FC: 27 Tocujlcoiotl] “The bill is long, like a nail, dart-shaped; the head is chili-red, [the body] ashen, the neck long. It is tall, high, towering. The legs are stringy, very long, black, like stilts.” Martin del Campo identified this as the “Brown Crane,” now known as the Sandhill Crane. The description fits to a T.
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analysis here also appearing in E. S. Hunn, "The Aztec Fascination with Birds: Deciphering Sixteenth-Century Sources," unpublished manuscript, 2022, cited here with permission.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 the tocuilcoyotl, see the Florentine Codex, Book 11, f. 26v.
Available at Digital Florentine Codex/Códice Florentino Digital, edited by Kim N. Richter and Alicia Maria Houtrouw, "Book 11: Earthly Things", fol. 26v, Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/11/folio/26v/images/c72ee4e1-e... Accessed 16 October 2025.

https://gdn.iib.unam.mx/diccionario/tocuilcoyotl/73973