The pop-tent: one side on the ground, one side not quite and I can’t get it to fold flat anymore, so this is how we got yesterday’s story.

After swooping around the patio, today it was the hawk that landed on the edge of the square tomato cage. Wow, I really wasn’t expecting that.

What I couldn’t see was that he had flushed out a dove and it was now cowering somewhere at the bottom of that pop-tent–or somewhere right around there. The blueberries are in an identical cage next to it with room for me to walk between the two but not for his wide wingspan.

All I knew at first was that he hadn’t caught what he’d gone after and he was standing on that thing and looking at me. My iphone was a short stretch away and while I was debating reaching for the camera vs. scaring him away, he fluttered his wings and released his talons awkwardly from that thing, gripping again and shifting sideways a bit, giving me a good profile view: long and lean and nothing in his crop–he was hungry.

Suddenly he swooped in a very tight circle around that small cage and then again, reaching down into the canyon between with his feet till a flurry of gray suddenly exploded out of there at last in a panic. He was determined not to let it get away this time.

I had not noticed that during this, the neighbor’s very large white-faced black cat had entered the picture and was watching the show at the end of their fence at the T-intersection where it suddenly drops down a foot to mine.

And the mourning dove was going straight for that cat.

Wait, what? I mean, I know doves are hardly the smartest, but…!

Just as the three of them intersected visually from where I was sitting there was an explosion of small feathers and at first I wasn’t sure if the cat had taken a swipe or if the hawk had grabbed for it but from the trajectory as they poofed backwards not sideways, it had to have been the hawk. The dove still had its flight feathers and was using them for all it was worth but the hawk was right there closing the last of the gap.

And then they disappeared over the fenceline straight past the cat’s nose, so as usual, I got all the drama and none of the gore but thankfully the cat could only say the same.