by Dominic Chadbon | Sep 22, 2020 | Fynbos |
Like beer and burgers, the flowers on Rondebosch Common are always better in the afternoon. There’s no point getting there in the morning: these are Cape Town plants after all, and you know what Cape Town is like. The mornings are simply too early to do anything, and...
by Dominic Chadbon | Aug 18, 2020 | Conservation |
They say it used to take two days to haul an ox wagon from Cape Town harbour across the Cape Flats to Somerset West. At a modest distance of some 45 kilometres (28 miles) you might be wondering why it took so long. Until you visit Zandvlei Nature Reserve. Tucked away...
by Dominic Chadbon | Aug 3, 2020 | Fynbos |
Can we stop using the word “winter?” May through September in the Western Cape is the Rainy Season. We use that phrase in the rest of Africa; it beats me why we insist on calling it winter down here in Cape Town. The Cape’s Rainy Season is just that:...
by Dominic Chadbon | Jun 9, 2020 | Nature |
Sorry to tell you this but Fynbos is a tight-fisted so-and-so. As beautiful as it is, this vegetation is so lacking in things to eat that even Bear Grylls would end up ordering in. Apart from a handful of Iris bulbs, nearly all fynbos plants are inedible: very few...
by Dominic Chadbon | May 12, 2020 | Bird Watching |
In the 1980s, a pair of British researchers decided to see just how many birds live in fynbos. For two years they trapped and recorded fynbos birds at various sites across the mountains in the south-western Cape. One place was Swartboskloof – Black Bush Ravine –...
