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Search Issues: Update 2026-09-16 - Repairs to some of our search pages are ongoing. Thank you for your continued patience!
Meanwhile, elements of the Advanced Search are working and the Alphabetical Listings are working, too.
the cutting edge of a sharp blade; but also, this is a reference to a bird with an unusual bill, perhaps the Black Tern (see Hunn, attestations)
TEN-ITZ-TLI, literally, “obsidian bill,” possibly the Black Tern (Chlidonias niger) [FC: 31 Tenitzli] “It flies high always at night there over the lagoon {Lago Texcoco}. It is the same size as a dove. Its head is quite small, black. Its breast is somewhat white, somewhat dark. Its back is black; its wings quite small. Its body is all small and round, its tail small, and its legs are like a dove’s. For this reason it is called “obsidian bill”: it has three bills in all. Its food enters in two places, [though] there is only one throat by which it swallows it. It has also two tongues. Its [three] bills are one over the other…. The food of the
The Getty's Digital Florentine Codex includes an image of the tenitztli bird:
https://florentinecodex.getty.edu/book/11/folio/31v/images/c24e8d5d-93c2....