Wandering-vector characterization of a unilateral shift

An operator $T$ is a unilateral shift exactly when it is an isometry, $(\mathrm{Im}T{)}^{\perp }$ is one-dimensional, and ${\bigcap }_{n\ge 1}\mathrm{Im}(T^n)=\{0\}$. A unit vector $e_1$ in the first orthogonal complement is wandering, and $e_n=T^{n-1}{e}_1$ is a complete orthonormal basis.