by Bryn De Kocks
Recent Adventures
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Bird Outings & Twitches
Bird Club Outing – Vergenoegd and Spier
After a nearly three year absence from the Somerset West bird club outings, I decided to join up with the club again as they visited Vergenoegd Farm and Spier Wine Farm during the monthly outing. After fighting with the warmth of the duvets, we managed to make it to the meeting area in time, with…
Birding In Betty’s Bay and Rooi Els
After our recently failed attempt at finding the Protea Seedeater at Paarl Nature Reserve, Monique and I headed through to Harold Porter Nature Reserve in Betty’s Bay after someone reported seeing a pair of Protea Seedeater near the entrance a few days prior. Weather seemed great upon our departure from Somerset West, though once we…
Improving Your Bird Identification
Being able to identify the bird you’re looking at is probably the most core aspect of birding, it is also one that doesn’t come without effort. Like with most things in life, what you put in is what you get out and if you continue trying to learn, you’re going to improve. If you become…
The Search for Steppe Buzzards
Steppe Buzzards are the most common of raptors for parts of South Africa during the summer months, specifically the Western Cape. Yet somehow my encounters with these creatures had been limited, in actual fact, I had seen more individual Cape Mystery Buzzards than I had Steppe Buzzards. I wanted to encounter the Steppe Buzzard as…
A Little Yellow Surprise: Western Yellow Wagtail At Macassar Sewage Works
Our Saturday started early. The plan was to drive through Van der Stel Pass near Botrivier, then head to Hawston to search for the Red-Breasted Swallow again. Things didn’t go quite as expected, and we ended the afternoon with a Western Yellow Wagtail in Macassar. Here’s how the day unfolded. Van der Stel Pass Birding…
3 Dips and a Tick
There has been a bit of excitement around a couple of Ferruginous Ducks that were seen last week at the Paarl Bird Sanctuary. This weekend I was checking facebook constantly for updates from other birders to see one of two things: A) Whether they were in fact victims of reverse migration or B) Escapees. On…
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…
