Ā-COYO-TL, Neotropic Cormorant (Phalacrocorax brasilianus) [FC: 30-31 Acoiotl] “It comes after the pelican…. It appears at the time that the water birds come …. Its head is as large as the turkey hen’s. The bill is pointed, black, quite cylindrical; the outer edge of the tip is yellow. Its breast is rather white. Its back, its wings all are ashen, blackish, like duck feathers. It is long-billed. Its legs are thick, not long; they are at its rump, almost at its tail. It is also rare…. All told of the pelican also [applies] similarly to the water turkey.” Identified as the "Water Turkey," now known as the Anhinga (Anhinga anhinga) by Martin del Campo. I believe this name more likely was applied to the Neotropic Cormorant (Phalacrocorax brasilianus). Neither the cormorant nor the Anhinga shows a white breast, while the other characters noted might apply to either. However, the cormorant is more likely to have been known in the lakes of the Valley of Mexico.
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); : 129, 131; 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analysis here also appearing in E. S. Hunn, "The Aztec Fascination with Birds: Deciphering Sixteenth-Century Sources," unpublished manuscript, 2022, cited here with permission.