Birds in the Bronze Age

There appeared a great sign; a snake, his back blood-mottled, a thing of horror, cast into the light by the very Olympian, wound its way from under the altar and made toward the plane tree. Thereupon were innocent children, the young of the sparrow, cowering underneath the leaves at the uttermost branch tip, eight of them, and the mother was the ninth, who bore these children. The snake ate them all after their pitiful screaming, and the mother, crying aloud for her young ones, fluttered about him, and as she shrilled he caught her by the wing and coiled around her. After he had eaten the sparrow herself with her children the God who had shown the snake forth made him a monument, striking him stone, the son of devious-devising Kronos, and we standing about marvelled at the thing that had been done. 1 Homer THE EARLIEST SOURCES