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At the Delaware shore, my mother-in-law didn't know what the very large bird she'd seen looking in the bathroom window was. I told her it must have been a crow but she seemed unconvinced. Later I saw it too, clearly not a crow. Not a grackle, a starling, a raven.

Everyone who used that 2nd floor bathroom encountered the vulture peering in the window or strutting around the adjacent rooftop. It started to seem like one of the family, and happily, no one mentioned Edgar Allen Poe. Not that I have anything against him, but he no more invented or defined birds of somber feathers than Proust invented or defined memory.