"Travel is dangerous for birds and men. (Odysseus had shared the danger of the Hoopoe in the through of the wave). When I leave Geneva to go to Greece, when I leave my home in the twentieth century to visit Hellas, I hold my breath until the weeks of wandering are over, until home-life is restored, the family re-united. The Wood Warblers, even on Mykonos, can have no greater sense of the precariousness of its own life than I have. I am one with Odysseus and the Hoopoe."

The Storm petrel and the owl of Athena. Louis Halle.