TLATHUI-CICI-TLI, cf. TLATHUI “to dawn,” Canyon Wren (Catherpes mexicana) [FC: 47 Tlatvicicitli] “It is the same as the brown towhee . It is named tlatuicicitli because of its song. When it is still dark, long before dawn, it begins to sing. As it sounds its song, it is as if it says tlatuicicitli. It lives in one’s roof, in one’s wall. It awakens one.” Martin del Campo identified this as a wren of the genus Thryothorus, of which several occur in the highlands of Central Mexico. However, these wrens favor brushy forest thickets and are very hard to see. I believe it is the Canyon Wren (Catherpes mexicana), as the behavior described fits my personal experience with this species in Oaxaca.
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analysis here also appearing in E. S. Hunn, "The Aztec Fascination with Birds: Deciphering Sixteenth-Century Sources," unpublished manuscript, 2022, cited here with permission.