Hummer Festival - Rockport, TX

September 2024

We have just returned from our visit to Rockport, TX to attend the annual Hummer Festival. OK, I’m laughing, you’re laughing, and if you don’t know why we’re laughing do not, under any circumstances, look up the word hummer in the urban dictionary. OK, we’ve had our little giggle, are we ready to sit up straight and act like adults? I’ll continue.

The Hummingbird Festival (yeh, I couldn’t continue) in Rockport, TX is a celebration of the ruby-throated hummingbird migration from North America to Central America.As you can see from the map below the concentration in the migration is at the Texas Gulf Coast.

Courtesy of CornellLab

The festival is run by the Rockport Chamber of Commerce, and given that they’ve been doing it for 36 years it still seemed to be a mystery to them how it was supposed to work. However, in fairness, it turned out that normally almost the entire festival is based around the High School and the High School is currently undergoing a 3 year renovation (yes, you read that right, 3 years) so they only had access to the auditorium.

On a side note, a 3 year high school renovation, how does that work? It’s basically a rebuild, it’s worse than a rebuild, you can build a whole new high school in less than 3 years. It certainly looked like they were knocking down pieces of it and then rebuilding it in place. Given projects like that and their record for on-time completion there are going to be kids going to that school who will attend 4 years of high school on a building site. Weird.

Anyway, the organization left something to be desired, as did the obsession with people “signing in”. At the actual Chamber of Commerce you had to sign in before they would give you the booklet describing the festival, and frankly not in a nice way, but there you go. I understand, you want to know how many people attended and where they came from, but have a little customer service presence.

There is a Welcome and Opening Reception which promised a number of things, but actually only delivered on the wine and cheese. This was held in the Rockport Center for the Arts.

OK, another side note. The Rockport Center for the Arts is, I assume, if not a public building then it receives significant public funding because how could it not? Everything in it was for sale. All the exhibits had a price, the line between the gift shop and the exhibition spaces was hard to discern. I think if I’d made an offer for one of the bathroom stalls it would have been entertained. Weird.

We attended a couple of the talks which were very good, and Leslie attended a photography workshop which was very well done and received high marks. In particular the keynote presentation which promised dinner was very well catered. Food was all plated, and you picked it up and went back to your table. They fed the room in about 10 minutes. The speaker was interesting, although the presentation floundered from the advertised topic to shilling for various local trusts.

They have the Hummer Mall which, in a move they may live to regret, they held in an unairconditioned hangar at the county airport. Where it was hot, so very hot. We didn’t spend a lot of time there, but you know who did spend a lot of time there, the vendors, and they were not happy. For the next 2-3 years of high school renovation they are going to need to find an air conditioned alternative or the Hummer Mall will be no more.

The star of the show however are all the residents in the area who open their homes for hummingbird viewing. About 25 homes are open from dawn to dusk. Apparently to qualify they needed a minimum of 15 feeders hung up, but some far exceeded the minimum. One place has over one hundred feeders hanging. Don’t underestimate the work required. The feeders need to be cleaned and refilled at least once every 2 days.

On Friday night we arrived at one house around 5:00PM or so. The owner came out to unlock the gate, she’d been letting her dogs out while it was quiet, and gave us her chat and then went back inside. We spent over an hour in the peace of her yard watching a plethora of hummingbirds and taking pictures. It was such a peaceful way to end the day.

We established a pattern where we would find breakfast, spend a few hours visiting houses, break for lunch and to take a dip in the pool at our AiBnB (did I mention it was hot, so hot) and then set back out around 4:00PM to visit some more houses and then dinner around 7:00 PM.

We had a fantastic trip, far better than I expected it to be. I’m not saying we’re going back, but never say never.