The backyard was empty. Grass was just starting to grow, still too short to mow. It was still dry from the winter. All I could smell was the dust from last year’s growth. The sky was clear. It was the first warmish day of a new spring. All was quiet. Peace was the order of the moment.

Suddenly from the sky dropped a form. It was fast, a gray-brown blur.

There was a prairie hawk, in the middle of the yard. At first I thought it was alone. Indeed it was so occupied that it didn’t notice me watching. I stood still.

The hawk suddenly stabbed down with its beak, several times. At first I thought maybe it had a mouse, but there weren’t any in the yard, no burrows or tunnels. Then I saw another pair of wings, flapping upward. I couldn’t tell the color, they were in the shadow of the hawks own wings. It was another bird, struggling to escape. The hawk must have pulled from mid-air and landed to kill.

The hawk didn’t let go. Again and again it struck with its wickedly sharp beak while using its wings and talons to maintain control.

It seemed to go on for a long time, the struggle of predator and prey. It was probably only a minute or two.

Soon the second set of wings stilled. The beak stopped its rise and fall. The hawk looked around. Its great wings flapped once, twice, three times. I thought it was leaving. It rose into the air only to glide twenty feet, its pray held in its talons, to the shade of a bushy shrub just getting its leaves.

There it fed.

I left it to its meal.

Half an hour later, the hawk had left. I walked to the shrub. There was no blood, no bones. All I found to show anything had been there was one feather, stuck in the grass. No waiste in this cycle of life.

Is there a message for us in this?