by Bryn De Kocks
Recent Adventures
Enjoy My Content?
Consider signing up for my newsletter, and you’ll get the latest adventures delivered directly to your email.
Bird Outings & Twitches
Winter Morning at Rietvlei, Milnerton
After some very good rainfalls on Friday evening, the weather had cleared by Sunday and unlike the previous day, there was hardly any wind around. Not wanting to waste the rare pleasure of a warm and sunny winter’s day, we headed through to Rietvlei in Milnerton at around 09:30. I had previously been to Rietvlei…
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.
Northern RockHopper Penguin at Soetwater
I have been an awful birder of late, just horrible… I never twitched the Black Tern at Strandfontein, nor the Baillon’s Crake at Intaka Island. To be frank, I just haven’t had the energy for the most part. I should explain that my personality caters itself to obsession, followed by periods of complete inactivity, then…
A Day Out – Part 2 (Helderberg Nature Reserve)
Continuing on from my previous installment from Sir Lowry’s Pass. The time was now 7:30 and the Helderberg Nature Reserve gates had just opened, so I decided to head through to catch what I hoped would be some early morning bird activity. I arrived at the reserve at around 7:50 and the sun was now…
Great Egret & Overberg Landscapes
On Friday a whatsapp message came through in a birding group, of a Great Egret spotted by Dave Winter, just passed Rooi Els. The message arrived just after 17:00, and once I had seen it, the time was already 17:30. I had to decide whether I’d make it to the location before sunset. I already…
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…
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…
