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
What A Bird! Finding the Crested Honey Buzzard
It started out like almost any other Saturday, with the exception of a European Roller being located just outside of Stellenbosch. Milli and myself were excited for the opportunity for a new lifer (and one that had evaded me for far too long given its annual appearance in the province). After a 10-minute drive, we…
Rarities Galore at Strandfontein
While scrolling through my news feed on Facebook last Tuesday, I came across a post by Glynis Bowie asking for identification on a bird she had seen the previous weekend at Strandfontein Sewage Works. Me being the way I am with waders (In other words, useless) – I relied on the comments of others to…
A Twitch Bus Adventure – The Striped Crake Heartache (Part 2)
After our success twitch of the Malagasy Pond Heron the day before, we were feeling confident in our next target; that of the Striped Crake at Thiyeni hide in Hluhluwe Game Reserve. Hidden somewhere between our thoughts of optimism, we all knew that given the small area which the hide overlooks, in combination with the…
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 Little Yellow Surprise: Western Yellow Wagtail At Macassar Sewage Works
Our Saturday started early. The plan was to drive through Van der Stel Pass near Botrivier, then head to Hawston to search for the Red-Breasted Swallow again. Things didn’t go quite as expected, and we ended the afternoon with a Western Yellow Wagtail in Macassar. Here’s how the day unfolded. Van der Stel Pass Birding…
Birding Milestones and Misses – A Few Outings Worth Remembering
Since our recent trip up to Beaufort West, we’ve both been inspired to get out there and chase some new birds. Over the past few weeks, Milli even reached a major milestone, her 300th Western Cape bird. This post is a roundup of a few of those outings and the birds (and moments) that made…
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…
