Night crowes screech aloud,
Fluttering ’bout casements of departing soules.
Marston, Antonio and Mellida, ii. (1602).
Several crows fluttered about the head of Cicero on the day that he was murdered by Popilius Lænas ... one of them even made its way into his chamber, and pulled away the bedclothes.--Macaulay, History of St. Kilda, 176.
If crows flock together early in the morning, and gape at the sun, the weather will be hot and dry; but if they stalk at nightfall into water, and croak, rain is at hand.--Willsford, Nature’s Secrets, 133.
When crows forsake a wood in a flock, it forebodes a famine.--Supplement to the Athenian Oracle, 476.
Death-watch. The clicking or tapping of the beetle called a death-watch is an omen of death to some one in the house.
Chamber-maids christen this worm a “Death-watch,”
Because, like a watch, it always cries “click;”
Then woe be to those in the house that are sick,