Wow! We got two new yard birds today, after living in this house nine years. A northern harrier flew over while I was shoveling a foot of snow from the driveway late this morning, and a rusty blackbird was under the platform feeder a few minutes ago. The rusty blackbird was a life bird for my daughter. The other highlight of the day was an adult Cooper's Hawk who took a starling off the peanut feeder. The spunky starling refused to give up, and fought valiantly while pinned to the ground in deep snow under the hawk's talons. He fought for about 5 minutes, hawk repeatedly jumping up and down with him. Finally the unfortunate starling succumbed and was consumed. Later in the day a juvenile Cooper's perused the feeders for quite awhile, but was eventually distracted by a stray cat walking through the woods. He followed the cat until he was out of our sight. We also had our first Red-winged Blackbird today! Spring can't be far off! Total yard list (22 species) for today: N. Harrier -1 Cooper's Hawk - 3 A fox sparrow - he's been here about a week Song sparrow -2 Cardinal - 14 Blue Jay - at least 2 White-breasted nuthatch -2 Red-breasted nuthatch -2 Tufted Titmouse -2 Carolina Chickadee -2 Carolina Wren -2 Rusty Blackbird -1 Red-winged Blackbird -1 European Starling -20 House Finch -16 Goldfinch -12 Black Vulture 2 Turkey Vulture - 4 Canada Goose -20 Mourning Dove -6 Hairy Woodpecker -1 Downy Woodpecker -2 Heather Nagy Pataskala ______________________________________________________________________ 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]