Magpies and a nursery rhyme.

One for sorrow,
Two for mirth,
Three for a funeral
And four for birth 

This old nursery rhyme has its origins in superstitions connected with magpies, considered a bird of ill omen in some cultures, including Britain. The rhyme has many variants but this old version was first recorded around 1780 in a note in John Brand's Observations on Popular Antiquities on Lincolnshire.

In the scanned extra Kodachrome we are back in the Oman desert in 1990, in the company of a Bedouin man.