Before I could even get dressed this morning, I noticed a commotion in the
back corner of the yard. Binoculars revealed a fairly large Sharp-shinned
Hawk on top of a still struggling Mourning Dove. Since we haven’t seen a
Sharpie in the yard for a while, I sat down with binos and watched the scene
play out. The Sharpie kept plucking at the back of the head of the dove,
which struggled for a long time. At one point, when I hadn’t seen any signs
of life from the dove in some time, the dove suddenly made a huge effort to
get out from under and they were both flapping their wings as they fought.

Eventually the struggle ended, and the Sharpie continued to pluck feathers.
Then I started seeing some red so I went about my morning routine, with
occasional stops by the window. After a while even the Sharpie was still,
but his crop was huge by this time. I watched until he flew away, and then I
went out for some “clean up on aisle nine.” For some reason I thought there
would be something besides feathers, but other than a few red spots on the
snow, feathers was all that remained. So beak, skull, legs, wings, rib cage,
etc., were all inside the Sharpie when he flew away. Amazing, and quite a
show.

Tom McCabe, Boise