A few dinner guests and a carpetbagger!

Things are really starting to perk up here at The Homestead. The daffodils bloomed, as did the grape hyacinths and a few red tulips. There's been a TON of activity on the bird feeders as you're about to see!

Mr. & Mrs. Cardinal and a House Sparrow

A Red-Bellied Woodpecker
(Yes, I realize his head is red, not his belly, but that's his name!)

Male Downy Woodpecker

A brave gray squirrel...clearly Oscar was indoors!

Oh, now he's showboating!

A few times per week, I put peanuts out for the Blue Jays and Tufted Titmice.

Hello, Mr. Titmouse!

The Titmice will sit in the tree over the pond and call/sing for peanuts!

Today, Chris snapped two pictures of our newest pond inhabitant. OH! But before I get to that...we have fish in our pond!!! We thought we'd lost all of them to a Great Blue Heron that we spotted at our pond last fall. Not so! There are at least seven fish in the pond - two large ones and five offspring. We're very excited that we won't have to stock the pond again this year. It seems we've got quite the fertile pair in the pond already.

So now back to our newest inhabitant - our newest carpetbagger - a juvenile American Bullfrog. We've decided to name him Stewart because, as Chris says, "If he gets big enough, we can make him into stew." (Hint: That ain't happenin'.)

Say "hello" to Stewart!

What a handsome specimen!

Here's hoping Stewart sticks around, although having seen photos of American Bullfrogs eating finches that got too close to the water in a pond (finches, y'all!), I just hope he leaves the baby fish and all of my birds alone!