e are very few woods, and moors, and commons that are not
subjected to them. I have constantly seen the spirits of all manner of
birds in the parks in Dublin and London. Greenwich Park, in particular,
is full of them.

_Addendum to Birds and the Unknown_

Though their unlovely aspect and solitary mode of life may in some
measure account for the prejudice and suspicion with which the owl,
crow, raven, and one or two other birds have always been regarded, there
are undoubtedly other and more subtle reasons for their unpopularity.

The ancients without exception credited these birds with psychic
properties.

"Ignarres bubo dirum mortalibus omen," said Ovid; whilst speaking of the
fatal prognostications of the crow Virgil wrote:

"Saepe sinistra cava praedixit ab ilice cornix."

A number of crows are stated to have fluttered about Cicero's head on
the day he was murdered.

Pliny says, "These birds, crows and rooks, all of them keep much
prattling, and are full of chat, which most men take for an unlucky sign
and presage of ill-fortune."

Ramesay, in his work _Elminthologia_ (1688), writes:

"If a crow fly over the house and croak thrice, how do they fear they,
or someone else in the family, shall die."

The bittern is also a bird of ill omen. Alluding to this bird, Bishop
Hall once said:

"If a bittern flies over this man's head by night, he will make his
will"; whilst Sir Humphry Davy wrote:

"I know a man of very high dignity who was exceedingly moved by omens,
and who never went out shooting without a bittern's claw fastened to his
button-hole by a riband, which he thought ensured him 'good luck.'"

Ravens and swallows both, at times, prognosticate death. In Lloyd's
_Stratagems of Jerusalem_ (1602) he says:

"By swallows lighting upon Pirrhus' tents, and lighting upon the mast of
Mar. Antonius' ship, sailing after Cleopatra to Egypt, the soothsayers
did prognosticate that Pirrhus should be slaine at Argos in Greece, and
Mar. Antonius in Egypt."

He alludes to swallows following Cyrus from Persia to Scythia, from
which the "wise men" foretold his death. Ravens followed Alexander the
Great from India to Babylon, which was regarded by all who saw them as a
fatal sign.

"'Tis not for nought that the raven sings now on my left and, croaking,
has once scraped the earth with his feet," wrote Plautus.

Other references to the same bird are as follows:

"The raven himself is hoarse
That cr