death birdn.

1762 C. Emily in St. James's Mag. Oct. 96 And he of ghastly feature, on whose ear Unheeded croaks the death-bird's warning moan.

1862 J. G. Wood Nat. Hist. Picture Bk.: Birds 31 This is Tengmalm's Owl, or Death Bird, the latter name having been given to it on account of a common superstition that reigns among several of the North-American Indian tribes.

1870 S. A. Myers tr. Martin's Nat. Hist. 1st Ser. 312 The melancholy wailing notes of this [scops] owl may be heard,..frequently resembling the ominous boding of death, death. Therefore, in Switzerland, it is generally called the death bird, or herald of death.

1878 Proc. Royal Geogr. Soc. 22 452 The screech-owl is regarded everywhere in East Africa, as with us, as the death-bird.

1960 J. Bond Birds W. Indies 120 Barn Owl Tyto alba. Local names: Owl; Screech Owl; Night Owl; Death Owl; Death Bird; Jumbie Bird.

1987 Folklore 98 99 The most common of these [intersignes] is the call of the ‘death-bird’ in the neighbourhood of a person who is about to die. This bird, known in Breton as Labous an Ankou, is sometimes, but not exclusively, identified as the owl.

1820 P. B. Shelley Prometheus Unbound i. i. 36 The hope of torturing him smells like a heap Of corpses, to a death-bird after battle.

1832 J. Timbs Knowl. for People: Zool. Series 261 In German-Poland, this moth is called the death's-head phantom, the wandering death-bird, &c.

1919 Jrnl. Amer. Oriental Soc. 39 305 (note) The death-bird named ṣadaʼ..was believed to issue from the head, or rather the brain (the seat of the soul) of a dead person after the body had decomposed.

1925 H. H. Bailey Birds of Florida 78 Crotophaga ani (Black parrot, Death-bird, Jew-bird).

1967 Eng. Jrnl. 56 598/2 The death bird, clad in flowing black draperies swooped in and out of swirling mists, ready to scoop up the skaters.

1989 Hist. of Relig. 29 129 (note) Thorbjorn's cognomen, Krumm, signifies both ‘crooked’ and, through ‘crook-beak’, the raven as death-bird.

2011 D. Huddle in New Yorker 27 June 40/2 Where are you breeze-blown death birds now that I need you?