Ā-TONCUEPO-TLI, American Bittern (Botaurus lentigenosus): “For this reason it is called atoncuepotli: when it sings, it is clearly heard to explode; it is very loud” [FC: 33]. See also Ā-TEPONAZ-TLI and the main heading, TOLCOMOC-TLI.
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analysis here also appearing in E. S. Hunn, "The Aztec Fascination with Birds: Deciphering Sixteenth-Century Sources," unpublished manuscript, 2022, cited here with permission.
For a painting of this bird, see the Digital Florentine Codex.
Digital Florentine Codex/Códice Florentino Digital, edited by Kim N. Richter and Alicia Maria Houtrouw, "Book 11: Earthly Things", fol. 61v, Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/11/folio/61v/images/b6c1e834-2... Accessed 25 October 2025.