Yesterday morning (12-23) Jane and I resumed our daily mile-and-a-half hikes around the property, after a hiatus of one day. Friday morning the near blizzard was just a bit too severe. Yesterday was a bit more like a sporting bit of mountaineering, with the mud mostly frozen beneath the drifts. It's hard to really say, but I'm guessing we received 5 to 6 inches of rather wet snow. It had drifted in mounds along the pasture centerline fencerow across the hilltop. In the forest, it was plastered by the wind to the side of trees, an interesting visual feature. We took along our point and shoot cameras to document season's first significant snowfall. Not many birds around in the forest. At one spot there was a small group of chickadees and a couple golden-crowned kinglets. On the bottom part of the home stretch, as we were slogging through the ravine below the sheep pasture, a flock of about ten gulls appeared, circling in the sky above the treetops, no doubt ring-bills from the nearby Dillon Reservoir area, a mile or two distant as the gull flies. Interestingly, a lone screaming killdeer joined them. The feeders attracted the usual mobs of house finches, goldfinches, house sparrows, with all the other common feeder birds as well. One of the house finches had a bright orange-yellow rump, which definitely drew my eye. Bob Evans Geologist, etc. Hopewell Township, Muskingum County ______________________________________________________________________ Ohio-birds mailing list, a service of the Ohio Ornithological Society. Our thanks to Miami University for hosting this mailing list. Additional discussions can be found in our forums, at www.ohiobirds.org/forum/. You can join or leave the list, or change your options, at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/scripts/wa.exe?LIST=OHIO-BIRDS Send questions or comments about the list to: [log in to unmask]