The day my wife installed the several-pooledwater fountain outside on our back deck, I expect we both shared the same vision:
robins and sparrows, warblers and finches,chickadees and other songsters would arriveat our burbling flow to drink and to splash.
What joy we’d share, inside, yet mere feetaway, experiencing effortless, comfortablebird-watching, with no need of binoculars.
But over Eden, there hovered dark shadowswe hadn’t anticipated. Crows were the first to discover our cascading waterfall and bath.
Their wiliness often amused us as they dunked dried bread crusts before carrying them off.But we also recognized their black presence
cowed smaller species, so much so, our fountainbecame the feathered bullies’ private oasis,which they commandeered with corvid zeal.
On the morning we watched one black assassindunk its breakfast, a robin fledgling, into the pool,the chortling water was silenced for the summer.
