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…
Garden Route Twitch – White-Browed Scrub Robin & Violet Backed Starling
Some rare bird news filtered in during the week of a juvenile Violet-Backed Starling photographed in at a garden feeder in Groot Brak River, along with the presence of a Great Spotted Cuckoo and White-Browed Scrub Robin at Reflections Eco-Reserve at Rondevlei (Wilderness). The premise of the ‘Scrubber’ and the provincial mega Violet-Backed Starling had…
A Winter Visit to False Bay Nature Reserve
With a rare weekend of beautiful winter weather on the cards, I made sure to get out in the field as much as possible this weekend. Saturday I spent the day at Lourensford Farm building up a list of species for their conservation department, while on Sunday I went through to Strandfontein Sewage Works with…
Road To 300 – Parasitic Jaeger (291), Sabine’s Gull (292), Atlantic Yellow-Nosed Albatross (293)
This past week I had made plans with Monique, for us to try tick the Lemon Doves at Kirstenbosch Gardens and then head down to Mouille Point in the hopes of catching a glimpse of a Sabine’s Gull over the ocean. On the Friday I was then given a great opportunity to attend a pelagic…
Searching for Raptors at the Helderberg Nature Reserve
After a day of some birding that was less successful than I had hoped I decided to wake up early once again and dedicate the day to trying to see some raptors, an idea which at the end of it all I realized is probably far better done in summer. The weather was much better…
The Battle for the Bee-Eaters
It started out a regular day, an autumn day like many other – I was at home with my partner and my cousin, hanging out – when I got a notification on one of the birding WhatsApp groups about some White-fronted Bee-eaters spotted at Harold Porter botanical gardens. It was already mid-afternoon and still had…
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…
