by Bryn De Kocks
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Bird Outings & Twitches

A Rough Week
The past week has been anything but easy, both personally and in regards to being out taking photographs. Without getting too much into the personal knocks, my grandmother passed away last weekend, she was always extremely supportive of my love for photography and every week would edge me on, asking that I show her the…

A Weekend in McGregor
After several months of mechanics, my car finally gave a code on a diagnostic scanner and on Thursday morning I found myself with a car that had a cleaned throttle body – I was hesitant that this would be the fix, but I was hoping. My girlfriend has been in McGregor for a few weeks,…

Great Egret & Overberg Landscapes
On Friday a whatsapp message came through in a birding group, of a Great Egret spotted by Dave Winter, just passed Rooi Els. The message arrived just after 17:00, and once I had seen it, the time was already 17:30. I had to decide whether I’d make it to the location before sunset. I already…

A Spring Day at the West Coast National Park
On Sunday the 10th November 2013, my girlfriend, her father and myself went for a day’s outing to the West Coast National Park. Originally we had planned to head through on the 9th, but the weather was forecast to be clearer on the Sunday, so we opted for the Sunday instead. Mike Golby, Cathryn’s father…

Hightlights of 2013 – Birding and Photography
I can’t even remember when last I made a blog post, and quite frankly it’s inexcusable, as I have had many pretty good days out since my last update. However, I figured that I should make at least one post to end of the year. This year has been far from great, on almost all…

Birding The Helderberg – Macassar, Vergenoegd and Paardevlei
It was once again time for the monthly Somerset West Bird Club outing, and the weather was not looking kind at first light. The forecast wasn’t great and I wasn’t expecting much, and having woken up with a sore ankle, I was weighing whether I should go or not. At 7:40 I contacted Rose Mills…
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…