Rockport birding trip - day I

The last year, I mainly joined fieldtrips that would take only a few hours. It was about time to join a long weekend fieldtrip. A group of photographers from the Houston Photographic Study Group would gather in Rockport (TX) for a weekend long of birding.

Rockport is about a four hour drive from Houston, when you include the stops for coffee and a lunch. Since I had to fix some things in Houston first, I arrived a little after 3pm in Rockport. I dropped of my suitcase in my hotel room on the first floor, grabbed my camera and started to explore the area around the hotel. My first surprise was that most houses in the area around the hotel didn’t have a first floor. Maybe that’s why I got a discount on my first floor hotel room.


Every hotel along the beach had its own pier, which were used for fishing.

The person in the photo is not a guy with a golden bracelet, but a lady who is cleaning the fish she had caught during the day.

A little inefficient is that every hotel has its own pier, which looks like this at sunset.


The first day of the birding weekend was over, unfortunately without any birds. Most birds I have seen today were only stamp sized, maybe tomorrow will be better.


Later that evening, most of the photographers would go for dinner. While I was waiting for them in the lobby, I started talking to a man who told me that he lived in the North of the US most of the year, but moves to Texas for January through March. I always thought only Florida was the destination for retirees. The group of people who stay in Texas during the winter are called ‘Winter Texans’.