After another week of plummeting temperatures which brought snow to the mountains of the South-Western Cape, the Great Spotted Cuckoo in Klipheuwel seemed to be bracing it well, now present for nearly two weeks, it was last seen on Friday morning. Noting that the cold front was forecast to pass and give way to partly […]
This weekend began with me not expecting to be able to get out in the field at all due to the weather forecasts, but on Saturday morning I woke up and looked outside and saw that while it was cloudy, there was far more sun than I was originally expecting. I realized that this may
Well, it’s been a while since my last birding blog update, but at no fault of my own… Winter has been baring down on Cape Town in full force over the past few weeks, in fact this weekend will be the third straight weekend of rain, and while others have been making the most of
Well, winter is without a doubt upon us here in South Africa, especially true for the Western and Eastern Cape where we have been having rain for at least two-thirds of the week and as luck seems to always have it, the rainiest days occur on the weekends. Because of these conditions I have been
To top off an already busy weekend of birding I decided on Saturday night that I would wake up early, and if weather permitting, head to the Strandfontein Sewage Works and Rondevlei Bird Sanctuary. At around 8:15am I looked at the weather via some webcams in Cape Town and Muizenberg and decided I may as
The weekend got started on the Friday evening with a great sunset, I headed down to Strand beach and positioned myself at the tidal pool and waited as the colours increased. While shooting, a couple walked onto the tidal pool wall and stood staring at the sunset for a bit, as can be seen in
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.
Earlier this week I decided that on Sunday (10 June 2012) I would make a plan to head to the Paarl Bird Sanctuary should the weather co-operate. Lucky enough, the large cold front which brought snow to the mountains around the Western and Eastern Cape and even as far as Gauteng had passed and the
After a day of some birding that was less successful than I had hoped I decided to wake up early once again and dedicate the day to trying to see some raptors, an idea which at the end of it all I realized is probably far better done in summer. The weather was much better
A plan was made to head out on Saturday 2 June with a couple of other birders in the area, one of which I knew online. I stumbled out of bed at 6:50am after a barrage of alarm clocks I had set to ensure I would get there on time. The plan was to visit
In an entry I made last week I discussed my misfortune with the Gymnogene that nests fairly near to my house, though not exactly sure where. I was driving home and the bird flew across in front of my wind screen by just a few meters, but being without my camera, it felt like a
There has been a bit of excitement around a couple of Ferruginous Ducks that were seen last week at the Paarl Bird Sanctuary. This weekend I was checking facebook constantly for updates from other birders to see one of two things: A) Whether they were in fact victims of reverse migration or B) Escapees. On
While I would like to keep this blog primarily a birding blog with a few lines in a post about my landscape photography adventures, this week has not allowed it to be possible and the following post will contain mostly landscape photographs, but don’t get me wrong, there was a lot of attempted birding. First
I recently headed to the Dick Dent Bird Sanctuary with the Somerset West Bird Club, originally I didn’t think I’d have time as I had an extremely busy schedule for the day, but after performing the errands I needed to, I found myself able to meet up with the small group of local birders at
After having seen Intaka mentioned all over my facebook’s newsfeed for a couple of months, and having been told about it in one of the Rondevlei hides – I decided that I would actually do some research and see what the Intaka Island Wetlands was. After a quick google, I came to the Intaka Island
On Friday 4 May I found myself on my regular Friday route after work, driving from Somerset West to my girlfriend’s place in Sea Point. I began noticing a bit of a potential for an interesting sunset while I was driving on the N2 towards Cape Town and did my best to ensure that I
With the long weekend marked on my calendar I was sure to make the most of it and contacted Duinepos chalets a couple of weeks ago. I was originally wanting to book for 2 nights, but with the winter weather arriving I figured I’d play it safe and not risk losing money. I booked for
With the seasons well into their transitional period, I’ve been on alert for a few weeks now with regards to the weather. In Autumn there are by far the most interesting weather events for Cape Town, this is to say that our thunderstorm season, if it were to be called that, runs from March until
I recently decided to eventually head to the West Coast National Park with my girlfriend, the West Coast is a place that I haven’t been to in many years but have continued to hear good things about by both birders and herpers alike. I decided to go on Easter Friday as I figured it would
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
Finally I managed to successfully twitch a rare species! Just for a bit of a back story, last year I dipped on a Cape Vulture that was spotted not far from me in Strand. On that day, as soon as I got the rare bird report e-mail from Trevor Hardakar about the sighting I took
