by Bryn De Kocks
Recent Adventures
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Bird Outings & Twitches
Grootvadersbosch – Day 2 (Forest Birding)
This is a continuation from my previous blog post. We woke up on the 2nd day of our holiday at around 6:30, in an attempt to head out into the Grootvadersbosch forest by 8:00, which was achieved. Some common birds hung around near the cottage as we were getting ready to leave, including some Cape…
One Good Tern Deserves Another – Elegant Tern
Recently there have been several rarities pop up around the Cape Town area, but I had yet to twitch any of them, despite being on my to-do lists. However, on Saturday 5th February Trevor Hardaker dropped me a message letting me know that him and Margaret were going through to Hermanus to see the Elegant…
Autumn at Kirstenbosch Gardens
After a night of little sleep, I woke up to a sunny Autumn day in April and with my girlfriend Monique feeling a bit under the weather I hoped to try and makes things a bit better by planning a spontaneous mission. I opened up Google maps and began looking at possible destinations that would…
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…
A Visit to Intaka
The day started off as any 29’C day should, with an early morning rising. Well it was a partially early morning rising, we got out of bed at around 7:30 and got ready to head out to Intaka Island. With money tight, as it often is – we couldn’t venture too far and I hadn’t…
Little Ringed Plover at Vermont Salt Pan
Nearly three weeks ago, news broke that the country’s first Little Ringed Plover was discovered at the Tankatara Salt Pans near Port Elizabeth. It was mere minutes later that plans were being put in place by fellow twitchers to chase down the bird with a rather lengthy 16 hour return trip. I was one of…
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…
