Ā-ZŌL-IN, literally, “water quail,” Wilson’s Snipe (Gallinago delicata) [FC: 28 Açolin] “Also it is called çoquiaçolin . It is long-billed, long-legged. It is varicolored like a quail…. Its home is in the water, among the reeds” [FC: 28). I agree with Martin del Campo that the most likely referent is the Wilson’s Snipe as the description is apt.
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analysis here also appearing in E. S. Hunn, "The Aztec Fascination with Birds: Deciphering Sixteenth-Century Sources," unpublished manuscript, 2022, cited here with permission.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 azolin, see the Florentine Codex, Book 11, folio 27r.
Available at Digital Florentine Codex/Códice Florentino Digital, edited by Kim N. Richter and Alicia Maria Houtrouw, "Book 11: Earthly Things", fol. 27r, Getty Research Institute, 2023. https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/en/book/11/folio/27r/images/c72ee4e1-e... Accessed 16 October 2025.