" I heard a noise outside the house, and sat up. There was nothing to see inside the room except the living-room furniture. The wind is coming up, I thought. It's begun to blow through the trees. What I heard next happened all at once, a loud but slightly muffled sound. Logic was not part of this sequence. What I heard was the sound of wings beating, many large wings marking time. I thought of the pair of doves that flew to the backyard feeder every day and I said to myself, But this is the sound of hundreds. How can there be so many? Why would wings be beating at night? "

― Frances Itani , Remembering the Bones