Attar's protagonist

Here are a couple of pictures of our friend, the hoopoe — one with his or her crown down and one with it on display. I found these on Google images; both were taken in Oman, but the hoopoe is common all across Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.

As an aside, I just discovered that last year Israel chose the hoopoe to be its national bird (according to the website http://jwest.wordpress.com/), although it is mentioned in the Pentateuch (Lev. 11:19; Deut. 14:18) as unclean and unfit for eating. I wonder whether this last fact is an element of Hafez's meaning when he refers to the bird—"do not try to seduce me from the Path with a hoopoe's crown"?

Professor Alice Hunsberger and Riley Kellogg