by Bryn De Kocks
Recent Adventures
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Bird Outings & Twitches
Birding: Far More Than Just A Hobby
The old class mates, social acquaintances or family members who have me on social networks see my birding related posts and their automatic assumption is more than likely, “He must really like looking at birds. It sounds boring”. Though the reality of the situation is far different than what they assume. While for many birdwatching…
Twitching A Marabou Stork
If you read my previous blog entry, you would have seen that while attempting to twitch the Marabou Stork near Bredasdorp, the car I was driving managed to suffer a case of the flat-tyre. In turn, we had to call off our plans to head to Bredasdorp and make a straight line back home. It…
European Nightjar At Helderberg Nature Reserve
Several weeks ago, a European Nightjar was reported at the Helderberg Nature Reserve in Somerset West, no more than 5 minutes from where I stay. I went to the reserve the day after the sighting and attempted to see the bird myself – but there was no sign of it. Fast forward to last week…
Garden Route Birding – Day 1 & 2
Introduction This blog entry is likely to be a bit longer than my other entries, both in terms of words and images. I’ll do my best to keep things concise, while ensuring to cover the various aspects of the trip. In summary, I was given the opportunity to go stay in the Garden Route (Sedgefield)…
An Escape To The Hills of Honeywood
After a stressful series of months, having to move houses and the subsequent drama thereof; I was more than ready to escape away from everyday life and spend a weekend away from home. My girlfriend Milli and I had been discussing places where we could go visit, enjoy the nature and the photography, along with…
Grootvadersbosch – Day 4 (Road Side Birding)
This is the final part of my four part blog series documenting my vacation to Grootvadersbosch. Saturday, we woke up and lay in bed a bit – until I read some e-mails on my phone and saw that there was a Marabou Stork located near Bredarsdorp, and while it was an extra 80 or so…
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…
