by Bryn De Kocks
Recent Adventures
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Bird Outings & Twitches
Knob-Billed Duck at Strandfontein Sewage Works
Earlier this past week we twitched the African Crake at Strandfontein, only to get home and receive another rare bird alert minutes later saying that a Knob-Billed Duck had been spotted just a couple hundred meters away from the Crake. The report came in the late afternoon and we wouldn’t be able to make it…
Birding at Strandfontein Sewage Works and Rondevlei – 17 June 2012
To top off an already busy weekend of birding I decided on Saturday night that I would wake up early, and if weather permitting, head to the Strandfontein Sewage Works and Rondevlei Bird Sanctuary. At around 8:15am I looked at the weather via some webcams in Cape Town and Muizenberg and decided I may as…
Kogel Bay Camping Trip
A friend of mine recently contacted me asking if I would want to go camping for the long weekend, as we had both taken leave for the Friday. After weighing up the options, we decided that we would spend a couple nights at Kogelbaai (Koeel Bay / Cool Bay). Since Cool Bay is only 20…
West Coast Birding Yields Big Surprises – (Warning: May Contain Traces of Bateleur)
Megan and myself were lucky enough to be spending this Sunday with the Hardakers, whom I hadn’t had the pleasure of birding with properly since our last twitch of the Marabou Stork in 2013. The original plan was for us to head out on Saturday and target the Antarctic Terns in Jacobs Bay, and the…
The Return of the Tawny
For those reading with the intention of only hearing about the Tawny sighting, you can scroll down to Tuesday 25 September. Wednesday – 19 September 2012 Another lunch time meet up with Tertius Gous at the Helderberg Nature Reserve started off with a sighting of a Juvenile Jackal Buzzard in close proximity on the drive…
The Not-So-Common Cuckoo
A bit of a late entry for this twitch, but about a month ago a local birder (whom I shall refrain from naming due to a bit of controversy that took place after the fact), heard about a Common Cuckoo found on a friends farm. The bird had been seen for a few days in…
Storm Chasing Adventures
Browse All Storm Chasing Blogs
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…
