by Bryn De Kocks
Recent Adventures
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Bird Outings & Twitches
De Hoop Nature Reserve Visit – 2 May 2015
It’s been exactly two years since my last visit to De Hoop Nature Reserve, until this weekend that is. On Friday evening, Megan and myself discussed what we would be doing the next day and I asked her which of the Western Cape bird species she’d most like to see in person. Her response was…
Dick Dent Bird Sanctuary Meet Up
I recently headed to the Dick Dent Bird Sanctuary with the Somerset West Bird Club, originally I didn’t think I’d have time as I had an extremely busy schedule for the day, but after performing the errands I needed to, I found myself able to meet up with the small group of local birders at…
A Weekend Birding the Overberg
We’d been trying to make plans to stay with our friends Keir and Alouise in Napier for over a month now, however with winter conditions having been prevalent on most of the weekends we had tried planning, we’d just not been able to make it happen. Finally we were given an opportunity, as forecasts showed…
Raptors and Wetlands
The original plans this weekend were to head off with Cathryn to Kirstenbosch Gardens on Saturday morning and attempt to find some of our feathered friends, though due to rain which persisted through most of the day, we found that we were unable to really head out at all. Sunday morning however, the sun was…
Snowy Egret at Black River – 9 June 2015
Last night (8 June) I was running through my Facebook news feed when I saw a post made to the Wider Cape Town Birders Challenge group about an unusual Egret sighting that happened along Black River, just off the M5 near Cape Town. The post, made by Dominic Rollinson didn’t garner too much attention at…
The Tristan Challenge
Prior to my recent Flock at Sea cruise, I knew little about the Tristan Albatross. Sure, I had seen it in my guide books and the fact that it was listed as a critically endangered species. But only after the events on board the MSC Sinfonia did I begin to read about the bird and…
Storm Chasing Adventures
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Chasing Dusk: A Guide To Predicting and Photographing Sunsets
Nothing brings a landscape to life quite like phenomenal lighting. Sunset photography is popular, and sometimes just being in the right place at the right time will give you the biggest advantage in creating the photograph you’ve been envisioning. Thankfully being in the right place at the right time isn’t just a result of luck….
Chasing Lightning in Cape Town 12 & 13 February
Despite being in the middle of a water crisis, the Cape Town area got a few millimeters of rain relief this week with the arrival of some rare thunderstorms to the area. I’d been watching the model runs for a few weeks, and they had repeatedly shown some interesting developments into the third week of…
Chasing Snow in Ceres – 16 July 2017
The weather forecasts for the past week had been showing a strong cold front pushing through the Western Cape on Saturday evening into Sunday morning. Of particular interest with this front was the forecasted freezing levels, which suggested that we may be in for a good snow event across parts of the country. With the…
Chasing Lightning In The Cape
Some people may not be aware, but before birding came into my life I was heavily invested in storm chasing and in 2009 I founded the country’s first dedicated storm chasing community website. My active involvement in storm chasing and tracking may have diminished slightly over the years, but you can bet that if there’s…
Chasing Fires in Somerset West (3 January 2017)
At lunch time on Tuesday I left the house to pick up my girlfriend, but as I opened the front door I was greeted with flames whipping into the air on top of Rome Glen, which is just about 2 kilometers to my east. Fires are usually pretty common in summer around the area, but…
Chasing Mammatus and Other Local Adventures
I woke up on Sunday morning with Monique doing a “Women’s Walk” in Cape Town, and thus had the morning to myself and had planned to head through to Kogelbay and try some surf photography again. The swell forecast was good and the surface wind was forecast as a moderate South Easter, usually good for…
