by Dominic Chadbon | Aug 22, 2024 | Nature |
Now that was a wet month. My rain gauge recorded nearly 70% of 2022’s total precipitation in July 2024. Reservoirs in the Western Cape (nearly dry in 2017) are now overflowing, if not bursting their dam walls, and every time it rains in my neighbourhood, floodwater...
by Dominic Chadbon | Apr 4, 2022 | Fynbos, Nature |
It’s not easy being a wild animal. There is always something that wants to eat you, lay eggs inside you or suck out your blood. And this is even if you are the one doing the eating, egg-laying and blood-sucking. Both hunters and the hunted need to blend into their...
by Dominic Chadbon | Jan 21, 2022 | Nature |
Dawn over a dark Atlantic Ocean. My eyes were already open when I heard the sound of bodies moving quietly behind me. It was, however, just my family beginning to wake up. We’d spent the night on the cliffs above the beach at Olifantsbos near Cape Point and it was...
by Dominic Chadbon | Nov 11, 2021 | Nature |
Oh, I know you know the clouds. There’s cumulus and cumulonimbus and … er … strata-something and then … hmm … Sirius? Or is that a star? Okay, perhaps it’s time for a quick guide to the clouds, and why not? Knowing your clouds – in an outdoor setting anyway – could...
by Dominic Chadbon | Jan 20, 2021 | Nature |
What a place Cape Town must have been just a few hundred years ago! Herds of antelope and zebra grazed landscapes of forests and flowers, scattering in panic at the appearance of lions and wild dogs. There were hippos in the wetlands, rhinos in the scrublands, and so...
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...
