Even at noon-day upon the market-place
Hooting and shrieking:”
and in Macbeth he introduces its cry as an accompaniment of the murder of Duncan:
“Hark! Peace! It was the owl that shrieked,
The fatal bellman, which giv’st the stern’st good-night.
He is about it:”
and again in Henry the Sixth:
“The owl shriek’d at thy birth; an evil sign;
The night-crow cried, aboding luckless time,
Dogs howl’d, and hideous tempests shook down trees.”