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…
A Twitch Bus Adventure – A Parting Gift (Part 3)
While our trip had seen us awake at completely unreasonable hours, it was decided that we wouldn’t be rushing out on Saturday, and instead we’d take it easy. We still wanted to hit the road in the morning though, as we’d be starting our venture back to Cape Town. While everyone else enjoyed their breakfast,…
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:…
Grootvadersbosch – Day 2 (Forest Birding)
This is a continuation from my previous blog post. We woke up on the 2nd day of our holiday at around 6:30, in an attempt to head out into the Grootvadersbosch forest by 8:00, which was achieved. Some common birds hung around near the cottage as we were getting ready to leave, including some Cape…
Eurasian Blackcap in Durbanville – A Tough Twitch
After an early morning visit to Ceres, I got home and logged onto my computer, downloading my snow images and getting ready to work on them. Just a few minutes into my work however, a whatsapp message came through of a Eurasian Blackcap photographed in a Durbanville garden just a few minutes earlier. Having just…
Holy Macaroni Penguin
I’m certainly not complaining, but what’s up with all the rarities the last two or three weeks. It’s not uncommon for rare birds to pop up around the Western Cape in February and March, but it’s been an action-packed few weeks, with a lot of lifers on the line for Milli and me. The Alert…
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…
