by Bryn De Kocks
Recent Adventures
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Bird Outings & Twitches
Birding Cape Farms Area – 27 February 2014
This day was set to be far more memorable than I had imagined it would be. I woke up, and had to put in for a day’s leave urgently as I had to take care of some things; but I was free until 11:30 in the morning so I figured I would risk my unreliable…
Birding In Betty’s Bay and Rooi Els
After our recently failed attempt at finding the Protea Seedeater at Paarl Nature Reserve, Monique and I headed through to Harold Porter Nature Reserve in Betty’s Bay after someone reported seeing a pair of Protea Seedeater near the entrance a few days prior. Weather seemed great upon our departure from Somerset West, though once we…
A Raptor Watch Weekend
Saturday (15 February 2014) – Newlands Raptor Watch This past weekend saw the annual Somerset West Bird Club raptor watch take place at Newlands Forest. Last year was my first time attending this yearly outing and we managed to catch sight of a European Honey Buzzard that time, so I was hoping for a repeat…
Birding in Somerset West – 9 June to 11 June 2012
After a series of cold and wet days during the past week, as soon as the cold fronts began to clear I headed to the Helderberg Nature Reserve for a very short check on the pond which tends to get some interesting visitors at times.
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…
African Crake at Strandfontein Sewage Works
Late yesterday afternoon I received an email from the South African Rare Bird alerts, saying that an African Crake had been seen and photographed at Strandfontein on the S3 pan in the afternoon. Unfortunately it was too late for us to leave from Somerset West to try and twitch the bird, so I decided to…
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…
