cuauhtlotli.

CUĀUH-TLOH-TLI, Peregrine Falcon (Falco peregrinus) [FC: 43-44 Quauhtlotli] “Likewise [it is called] tloquauhtli. The hen is somewhat large, and the cock somewhat small. The hen is a great hunter. It is called a falcon. {in Spanish}. It has a yellow bill; its feathers are all dark grey; there are twelve [feathers] on its tail. Its legs are yellow. When it hunts, [it does so] only with its talons. When it goes flying over birds…. It does not strike them with its wings; it only tries to seize them with its talons…. And if [the quauhtlotli] succeeds in catching one, it at once clutches [the victim] by the breast; then it pierces its throat.... And when it can eat it, first it plucks out the bird’s feathers…. It brings forth its young in inaccessible places it nests in the openings of the crags.” This is a very accurate and very dramatic description of what must be the Peregrine Falcon, though Martin del Campo suggested instead the Northern Harrier (Circus cyaneus). However, the harrier does not hunt as described.
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analysis here also appearing in E. S. Hunn, "The Aztec Fascination with Birds: Deciphering Sixteenth-Century Sources," unpublished manuscript, 2022, cited here with permission.