tezoloctli.

TEZOLOC-TLI, likely small plovers and sandpipers (Charadriidae, Scolopacidae) [FC: 27 Teçoloctli] “… is small, one which whirs [as it flies].” No further details noted, though it is described immediately following XOMO-TL, which I believe refers to a variety of terns (Sterninae), birds that nest on the sea coasts, then visit the highland lakes after nesting. If TEZOLOC-TLI follows a similar pattern, this term might refer to the several species of shorebirds (Charadriidae, Scolopacidae) that are known to visit the highland lakes of Central Mexico. Migrant flocks of these birds do “whir” when flushed, showing white bellies in flight. An addendum in Paragraph Three [FC: 57] elaborates: “Duck is the collective name for the white-breast, the , the teçoloctli . All come from the west.” This suggests a rather expansive referential meaning for “duck,” that is, CANAUH-TLI1, in Nahuatl, to include these shorebirds. But note that the term is extended also to the night-heron and the kingfisher.
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analysis here also appearing in E. S. Hunn, "The Aztec Fascination with Birds: Deciphering Sixteenth-Century Sources," unpublished manuscript, 2022, cited here with permission.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 an image of the tezoloctli, 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.