The one I hear in my family rather often is the owl hooting and bringing news of death. It's always news of death, not news that someone is being born, or that the house is on fire, or anything of that nature. Owls don't normally sit outside your house and hoot. If they do, you probably live next to a barn, or practice taxidermy and have stuffed their mate. But when you hear an owl hoot in the middle of the night, it can be rather alarming, because it's loud and very uncommon.
My mom heard the owl hoot three nights in a row when certain members of her family died. Not sure if it was four nights, but she stopped counting after three, or three and then it stopped. I'm certain the person didn't immediately die, but usually sometime that week. There was that one time when the owl only hooted twice, and then no one died, so he may have had the wrong house, or someone killed him and he couldn't finish his death omen, so they got to live longer.
Of course, I'm joking, but I don't know for certain where this myth comes from. I can find all kinds of info on an owl hooting and what it means, but not hooting over the course of three days. My mom learned it from her aunt and grandmother, both of which were German, but that's where my search ended. If you have any information, please call my 800 number.
"I'll tell you one more time, and then I'm leaving."