by Bryn De Kocks
Recent Adventures
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Bird Outings & Twitches
Hightlights of 2013 – Birding and Photography
I can’t even remember when last I made a blog post, and quite frankly it’s inexcusable, as I have had many pretty good days out since my last update. However, I figured that I should make at least one post to end of the year. This year has been far from great, on almost all…
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…
Improving Your Bird Identification
Being able to identify the bird you’re looking at is probably the most core aspect of birding, it is also one that doesn’t come without effort. Like with most things in life, what you put in is what you get out and if you continue trying to learn, you’re going to improve. If you become…
A Day Out – Part 3 (Dick Dent Bird Sanctuary)
The final installment of my rather busy Saturday that happened on the 9th March. After spending my pre-sunrise hours at Sir Lowry’s Pass and my morning and mid-afternoon hours at Helderberg Nature Reserve, I went home for a couple of hours rest. It wasn’t long before the next item on the schedule arrived though. Each…
A Weekend in Onrus – Day 1 & 2
It was Megan’s birthday a couple of months ago and as a gift from her grandparents, they gave her access to their holiday home in Onrus for a weekend. After an initial delay, the time had come for us to venture eastward, for the last weekend of July. I am not a stranger to Onrus…
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…
