by Bryn De Kocks
Recent Adventures
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Bird Outings & Twitches
A Twitch Bus Adventure – Malagasy Pond Heron (Part 1)
“Who’s on board the twitch bus?”, a query asked a few times this past week in our local whatsapp birding group. A newcomer to the group, I had assumed any mention of a twitch bus was purely in jest; there surely couldn’t be a twitch bus. That was until Garth Shaw sent me a message:…
The Double Dip
This is my first post since the new year, so happy new year everybody. I hope that you get out there and do lots of birding! My year has started with a car that keeps failing me and leaving me unable to bird as much as I’d want. Though thankfully I’ve had some help in…
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…
The Search for the Mysterious Eagle
Well now, where to start? The beginning as good a place as any… Yesterday (Friday 7 September 2012) I went to the Helderberg Nature Reserve as I often do during my lunch breaks, I started out at the pond before seeing one of the Cape Mystery Buzzards near their breeding forest, hence I decided to…
A Day Out – Part 1 (Sir Lorwy’s Pass)
I will start this post by bringing your attention to the ‘part 1’ you see above. The reason this is a single part of a multi-part ‘series’, is because I spent almost an entire day out this Saturday and going through 3 batteries and having to empty the CF card in between – I ended…
A Weekend of Raptors
The week started out less than great, on the night of my previous blog post, my car was broken into – drivers side window smashed and my GPS stolen, while I somehow never heard the alarm go off. This was followed by a rush to get a new window installed prior to taking my car…
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…
