Montezuma has a bird-vision, Columbus blown off track, February 21, 1493

Another of the omens told as occurring before the arrival of the Spaniards in Mesoamerica, came from the Historia de Tlaxcala. It repeats a story told in a different manuscript but uses more vivid language here. ML-P says this must be based on the account of one of Sahagun's informants. 

"... the men whose work is in the Lake of Mexico - the fishermen and other boatmen, or the fowlers in their canoes - trapped a dark-feathered bird resembling a crane and took it to Motecuhzoma [an alternate transliteration for Montezuma] so  that he might see it. He was in the Palace of the Black Hall; the sun was already in the west. This bird was so unique and marvelous that no one could exaggerate its strangeness or describe it well. A round diadem was set in its head in the form of a clear and transparent mirror, in which could be seen the heavens, the three stars in Taurus and the stars in the sign of  the Gemini. When Motecuhzoma saw this, he was filled with dread and wonder, for he believed it was a bad omen to see the stars of heaven in the diadem of that bird.

When Motecuhzoma looked into the mirroe a second time, he saw a host of people, all around like warriors, coming forward in well-ordered ranks. They skirmished and fought with each other, and were accompanied by strange deer and other creatures.

Therefore, he called for his magicians and fortune-tellers, whose wisdom he trusted, and asked them what these unnatural visions meant:  "My dear and learned friends I have witnessed great signs in the diadem of a bird, which was brought to me as something new and marvelous that had never been seen before. What I witnessed in that diadem, which is pellucid like a mirror, was a strange host of people rushing toward me across a plain. Now look yourselves, and see what I have seen."

But when they wished to advise their lord on what seemed to them so wondrous a thing, and to give him their judgments, divinations and predictions, the bird suddenly disappeared; and thus they could not offer him any sure opinion." 

from page ten,  The Broken Spears: the Aztec account of the conquest of Mexico, translated, edited with an introduction by Miguel León-Portilla, expanded and with a postscript, Boston, Beacon Press, 2006.

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After the humiliation of losing most of his crew to deception and then suffer the further insult of being rebuffed and degraded by the petulant shore captain, Columbus was nevertheless left tossing out on his wave.

"...next day, the wind increased greatly and made his anchorage impossible; he lost his anchors and had no alternative but to raise sail for the island of San Miguel. As he could not anchor here, however, because the storm was still blowing fiercely, he decided to wait with furled sails, though still in very great danger, both from the sea, which was very rough, and because he had only three sailors and a few ship's boys on board, all the rest of his men being on shore except the Indians, who had no skill in working sails or rigging. But himself performing the work of the absent crew, he passed the night in hard work and no little danger. And when day came, he found that he had lost sight of the island of San Miguel and that the weather had somewhat improved. So he decided to return to the island of Santa Maria, to see if he could rescue his crew, his anchors and the boat. He reached San Miguel on Thursday evening, 21 February."

from p.108 in  The Life of the Admiral By His Son, Hernando Colon translated into english by JM Cohen in The Four Voyages of Christopher Columbus , New York,The Penguin Group 1969