by Bryn De Kocks
Recent Adventures
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Bird Outings & Twitches
Snowy Egret in Cape Town – Worth a Second Visit
In the middle of last week I made a post about my first twitch of the Snowy Egret which was spotted along the Black River near Cape Town a week ago now, I also mentioned how short I was on time — with my original twitch being done during my lunch break. Because I was…
Public Holiday at Rondevlei
A couple of weeks ago there was a public holiday in the middle of the week and I decided I would head to Rondevlei as it had been a year since my last visit, entirely too long if you ask me. I won’t lie, there was some hesitation in the idea of using the rare…
The Buzzard Problem – Differentiating Steppe, Jackal and Forest Buzzards
Truth be told, I first started writing this article over a year ago, and it was a lot more bloated than this piece is. Over the past several years, I took a particular interest in raptors, and specifically Buzzards, more than likely because they were the birds that I came across most often in the…
Birding Paardevlei & Macassar (22 February 2014)
It was an early Saturday morning, and it actually started at the beach. I originally woke up early for a surf session, heading in at around 07:00, and leaving the glassy waters at around 09:30. I figured that since I was so close to Paardevlei, I may as well head down and see if there…
Twitching The Long-Crested Eagles & Red-Breasted Swallow
I mentioned recently in my blog about birding at Strandfontein, that Milli and I had gone after the Long-Crested Eagle that was seen near Klapmuts, outside Stellenbosch, where we didn’t manage to connect with the bird. Well, over this last weekend, while trying to decide what to do for the day, I checked my phone…
A West Coast Adventure – Part 2
This is a continuation of the previous post. We woke up fairly on Thursday and first looked at the forecast, so we could decide our next plan of action. We had paid for 2 nights of accommodation already, but spending a second night in weather that would keep us indoors seemed pointless. We could rather…
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…
