Citations:hoopoe


 * 1977 &mdash; At his feet the solar twins have reappeared, transformed into two beings whose features are both human and animal, with horns, tail, feathers, paws, scales, linked to the rapacious character by two long threads or umbilical cords, and it is likewise probable that each of them holds on a leash two other, smaller devils that have remained outside the picture, so that from branch to branch stretches a network of ropes which the wind sways like a great cobweb, amid a flutter of black wings of decreasing size: noctules, owls, hoopoes, moths, hornets, gnats. &mdash; Italo Calvino, The Castle of Crossed Destinies, Part 2, Chapter 2, 1969. Translated from Italian by William Weaver.