by Bryn De Kocks
Recent Adventures
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Bird Outings & Twitches
Camping Trip – Day 2 & 3 (Grootvadersbosch)
The second day of our camping trip saw me waking up just before sunrise, the temperatures were surprisingly comfortable during the night, but the fresh morning air required some extra padding before heading out with the camera. The clouds from the day before had disappeared and although the sun was still hidden behind the mountain…
Bird Club Outing – Vergenoegd and Spier
After a nearly three year absence from the Somerset West bird club outings, I decided to join up with the club again as they visited Vergenoegd Farm and Spier Wine Farm during the monthly outing. After fighting with the warmth of the duvets, we managed to make it to the meeting area in time, with…
Cuckoo for Buzzards
After my busy day out on Saturday the 9th of March I decided I may as well make the most of the fading summer weather and go out for the morning on Sunday, prior to the cricket which was starting at 10:00. We’re now losing more than 2 minutes of daylight a day with Autumn…
Grootvadersbosch – Day 1 (The Trip)
Recently Cathryn and I made the decision to postpone our desired trip up country to the KNP in order to focus on more Western Cape species, and with 1 May being a public holiday, I decided to put in for the Thursday and the Friday off work and to go away somewhere. I picked up…
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…
Green Backed Heron at the Helderberg
This weekend began with me not expecting to be able to get out in the field at all due to the weather forecasts, but on Saturday morning I woke up and looked outside and saw that while it was cloudy, there was far more sun than I was originally expecting. I realized that this may…
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…
