A neighborhood kid playing softball must have pounded a line drive into our living room window.

That’s what I thought after the “wham” I heard from another part of the house.

I expected to see a web of splintered glass when I walked into the living room. Instead, I saw a smudge on the window and a mourning dove on the concrete patio below.

The powder gray bird lay motionless. The collision ended its life, but dislodged not a single feather. The dove’s eye shone like an anthracite pebble.

I felt badly that the dove had attempted to fly through a window it couldn’t perceive. Need to hang some wind socks, I thought. But I also was stunned that a bird weighing just ounces had hit the window so hard it practically vibrated.

 Then I looked up and saw something even more amazing — perched on the patio rail was a sharp-shinned hawk. I quickly realized the hawk had been chasing the dove.

I involuntarily froze so as not to spook the hawk. I called my family to the wildlife reality show playing out on our back patio.

The little raptor held still except for a series of quick head movements. The hawk was alternating glances between the dead dove and the window. Or was it watching us?

We had plenty of time to study the hawk up close. It had a hunter’s eye, a ring of gold around a deep black center. It had brown on the wings and back, its underparts flecked with white and rust, and black and brown bands on the tail.

But what I noticed most were the long, thin legs, more yellow than pencils, leading to the talons. The legs had ridges that earned the sharp shin its name.

It waited for perhaps 30 seconds, its head tilting back and forth. Finally, it slipped off the patio rail and, opening its wings, clutched the gray feathers before flying off toward the back yard.

My wife and mother-in-law protested what had happened, expressions of outrage and mourning for a mourning dove slain by a hawk and our house.

I didn’t get it. I still don’t.

Maybe it’s because, as a hunter, I identify with the hawk. The hawk needs to eat, just as the dove needs to eat. But the dove fills its crop with safflower seeds I buy and serve up on a tray. It never even occurred to me to serve  the hawk rodents on a tray.

But to be perfectly honest, identifying myself with the hawk is more than a little dishonest.

Hunting represents my longest and most enduring connection to nature. It’s a cultural and social practice, a way to spend quality time with close friends and loved ones. And it’s most definitely about the food, shaped by an appreciation of game meat and an ethic that says wasting prey dishonors the hunter.

Hunting, to the hawk, is about survival. Everything about the bird says so, from its acute vision to its angular wings, from its sharp beak to its deadly talons.

Despite all of these considerable tools and adaptations, the hawk, like most predators, fails more often than it succeeds. Every failure wastes precious energy. Every victory provides nothing more than another day of survival.

So if the hawk develops an advantage by hunting near bird feeders, and perhaps even driving prey into picture windows, I say good for the hawk.

Yet I have heard bird feeding enthusiasts decry sharp shins. They invite nature up close by filling feeders, but shudder when some nature shows up with blood on its claws and beaks.

Even more mystifying to me are bird hunters who turn their shotguns on raptors. It’s shameful.

I raced downstairs to see if I could locate the sharp shin from the basement window. To my surprise, it was plucking the dove on the ground just a few feet away.

I called my oldest downstairs. I wanted her to see something she might never see again.

I wanted her to understand that what she was seeing wasn’t right, wrong or otherwise.

It was nature.

Right outside the window.

Reach Joe Duggan at 473-7239 or jduggan@journalstar.com.