Principal English Translation:
a variety of grassland sparrows (see Hunn, attestations)
Attestations from sources in English:
ZACA-TLA-TLI, literally, “grass-eater,” a variety of grassland sparrows (Emberizidae) [FC: 47 Çacatlatli]: “This little sparrow is small and round, smoky. It is called çacatlatli (zacatlatli) because it lives in grasslands. Amaranth [seeds] is its food.” This could refer to a variety of grassland sparrows now known in Mexican Spanish as “zacatoneros” (Howell & Webb).
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); Steven N. G. Howell and Sophie Webb. A Guide to the Birds of Mexico and Northern Central America (Oxford University Press, Oxford, New York, Tokyo, 1995); 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analysis here also appearing in E. S. Hunn, "The Aztec Fascination with Birds: Deciphering Sixteenth-Century Sources," unpublished manuscript, 2022, cited here with permission.