by Bryn De Kocks
Recent Adventures
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Bird Outings & Twitches
Twitching A Marabou Stork
If you read my previous blog entry, you would have seen that while attempting to twitch the Marabou Stork near Bredasdorp, the car I was driving managed to suffer a case of the flat-tyre. In turn, we had to call off our plans to head to Bredasdorp and make a straight line back home. It…
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…
The Vacation Post – A Look Back at December
Again I find myself with the compulsion to apologize for a lengthy absence from the site, in fact it’s been near 2 months since my previous entry. Once again my opening sentiments will remain in line with my previous post in that despite several birding attempts over the past 2 months, things have been far…
Somerset West Bird Club Outing and More
Friday – 17 August 2012 Starting on Friday, after a series of strong cold fronts which brought some damaging winds, icy temperatures and heavy rain, the sun was finally showing again and on my way home from work for lunch I noticed an unusually large amount of Pied Crows circling around the area, I figured…
Chasing Targets – Rooi Els, Rooisand and Elgin
With my provincial list now requiring me to travel a fair amount in order to see new birds, and petrol being at near all time highs, this past weekend saw Monique and myself set some fairly easy target birds for her list. Having just started listing in February of this year, she still has a…
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…
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…
