by Bryn De Kocks
Recent Adventures
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Bird Outings & Twitches
Birding at Paarl Sewage Works
Rather spontaniously, on Sunday morning Cathryn and I decided that we would take the trip through to Paarl Bird Sanctuary. I knew that she still need both White Faced and Fulvous Ducks and what better place to find them, earlier in the week the Fulvous had been reported, so things were looking good to get…
Incredible Bird Interactions At Spier, Stellenbosch
On Saturday, March 15th, 2025, we set out on a mission to try and get some good bird photographs rather than going after one bird in particular. The idea was to travel around the Helderberg, stopping at various locations and doing some short birding to see what turned up. Of course, there’s always the desire…
Little Crake at Clovelly – Twitch Successful!
Finally I managed to successfully twitch a rare species! Just for a bit of a back story, last year I dipped on a Cape Vulture that was spotted not far from me in Strand. On that day, as soon as I got the rare bird report e-mail from Trevor Hardakar about the sighting I took…
Camping Trip – Day 1 (Klondyke Farm)
With the recent long weekend, I made plans with my friend Andrew to go on a bit of a camping trip. I was given the challenge of planning the route and finding the best places to camp. Initially I spent about a week looking for locations, everything from the Cedarberg to the Tankwa Karoo. In…
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…
Holy Macaroni Penguin
I’m certainly not complaining, but what’s up with all the rarities the last two or three weeks. It’s not uncommon for rare birds to pop up around the Western Cape in February and March, but it’s been an action-packed few weeks, with a lot of lifers on the line for Milli and me. The Alert…
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…
