Cabbage Trees

A fine and frosty morning. I went out before breakfast hoping to get a frosty shot, but the sunshine is warm even at 7 am, and the frost burnt off quickly. Still, I was early enough to catch the morning light on these cabbage trees. Usually they are little more than silhouettes when I see them. Before long the mountains were covered in clouds again.

Nice large- you can see the two southern blackbacked gulls.

There is a lot of pollen in the air. It is affecting my son and even I am sneezing more outdoors than usual. I don't know what it is. The grasses haven't started flowering, and the pines peaked a couple of weeks ago, when pollen coated everything. I had to take care to clean the barrel of my zoom lens before closing it because of the pollen it collected in a few minutes.

I found one of our resident thrushes dead on the road. I felt so sad as I carried it in to bury in the garden.  I don't know if it was the male or the female. The male stopped singing a couple of weeks ago and I wondered if they had chicks to feed.  The other was scratching in the rough at the far end of the lawn.  The poor thing. They are so shy and retiring.  The blackbirds bully them unmercifully.