Outdoors,  Texas

Birding at Sportsman Road | Galveston

Last Saturday Chris and I drove down Sportsman Road on the west end of Galveston Island to scope out the birds before we went home from a couple of days on the island for a conference. We are familiar with Sportsman Road as it was a place Chris fished regularly while in college (we went to TAMUG) and a place I went to for a few field labs. It is a popular place to not only fish but to launch kayaks too.

There were quite a few birds out in the marsh that morning and a few of them let me take their photos. These were all shot via our car which lets you know that the birds are relatively close in the marsh.

heron
Tricolored heron

heron2

hidingducks
Ducks hiding behind the Spartina. They didn’t want their picture taken apparently.

roseates
Roseate spoonbills conjuring up some breakfast.

heron3

blueheron
A majestic great blue heron.

kingfisher
This belted kingfisher is probably the closest I’ve come to an actual decent photograph of this species. They are notorious for being camera shy and will move at any hint of a camera lens being pointed in their direction. When we drove by this pond the first time the bird was actually hovering over the pond and it would have been a great photo opportunity had we been going the other direction with me on the other side of the road. Oh well.

kestrel
This kestrel was flying at the west end of the Seawall and Chris pulled over into the parking lot for me to get a few shots of it. The bird was hovering over the grass as it spotted something that must have looked tasty for breakfast.

kestral4
I zoomed and cropped the next few photos.

kestral2
They are such beautiful birds!

kestral3
Ready to dive towards the grass, but spooked at the last minute. That was a fun interaction to see, though!

I’m loving this time of year so far and hope I can take advantage of the birds around the area more often in the next few weeks.

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