by Bryn De Kocks
Recent Adventures
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Bird Outings & Twitches
Twitching The Wattled Lapwing At Paardevlei
It’s been a busy last few weeks in the Cape with rarities, and with several provincial lifers for me all found relatively close, Milli and I found the time to get outside and find some of these birds. The elephant in the room is, of course, the fact that my last twitching post was made…
Winter Morning at Rietvlei, Milnerton
After some very good rainfalls on Friday evening, the weather had cleared by Sunday and unlike the previous day, there was hardly any wind around. Not wanting to waste the rare pleasure of a warm and sunny winter’s day, we headed through to Rietvlei in Milnerton at around 09:30. I had previously been to Rietvlei…
Finding Owls and Other Things
This previous weekend saw some local birding which started on Saturday morning. On Friday night I sent local photography and bird enthusiast Etienne Beneke a message to find out if he was perhaps keen to go birding on the Saturday morning. Etienne tries to get out every weekend, so he was more than amped to…
Birding the Swartland with the Somerset West Bird Club
This month the Somerset West Bird Club would be going to – well that depends. Originally the Batis was saying that we would be going to Hillcrest Farm, which I assume was the Hillcrest Farm in Durbanville. However, to my surprise, on the day we were told that we would actually be visiting some farms…
A Day of Birding – Strandfontein, Dick Dent and Helderberg
A plan was made to head out on Saturday 2 June with a couple of other birders in the area, one of which I knew online. I stumbled out of bed at 6:50am after a barrage of alarm clocks I had set to ensure I would get there on time. The plan was to visit…
Citrine Wagtail – Second Time Lucky
This past Saturday morning I was running through my Facebook news feed when I saw mention of a Yellow Wagtail reported at Strandfontein Sewage Works near Cape Town. Having the morning free, and having not had a chance to see a Yellow Wagtail yet, I debated the 40 minute drive for a bit before deciding…
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…
