Before Hannah found her way back to the Oregon Coast, she worked as a Park Ranger in Texas and Oregon and was briefly the Great Florida Birding and Wildlife Trail Coordinator. Now, Hannah uses her passion for tourism as a third generation, woman hotelier and works in her community and beyond to promote nature tourism. She also loves to explore the world with her husband, Erik, and shares their birdy travels with the world on a podcast: Hannah and Erik Go Birding. Hannah also advocates for women in the birding community with her own podcast: Women Birders (Happy Hour).
Galveston Birding and Nature Photo Festival
Hannah Buschert
Upcoming Events
April 2023
Galveston is a Gulf coastal island renowned for its many habitats. On the Gulf beaches, you’ll scan out on the swells and incoming surf for rafts of waterfowl and seabirds. Walking along the beach the edge of the surf is active with the antics of the island’s year-round and migrating peeps, Reddish Egret, Great Blue Heron, and shorebirds foraging on “what the tide brung-in.” Away from the water among the dunes of San Luis Pass, East Beach and GISP, Savannah Sparrow and Horned Lark flit about. Beyond the dunes are briny ponds holding roosting seabirds, Nelson’s and Seaside Sparrows, rails, coots, and water birds. In the bay and tidal marshes migrating and nesting herons, egrets and cormorants in their breeding best, forage. The avian fauna is always in flux with the advance and retreat of the tide moving the food chain in and out. Among the tidally influenced habits and the open coastal prairies and oak mottes migrating songbirds need to refuel and find fresh water.
Find out more »Birders will find this workshop/field trip combo the perfect introduction to coastal birding. During the workshop, your guides will give a brief discussion about the diversity of species, as well as various techniques to identify birds on the Upper Texas Coast. We will then board our bus and proceed to the East End Lagoon Nature Preserve beach area where you’ll see Black Skimmer, American Avocet, Black-necked Stilt, and many species of shorebirds, gulls, terns, sandpipers, plovers, and more. Stops along the way will highlight birds preferring marsh habitat.
Find out more »Love walking the beach shore and seeing all the "peeps" run back and forth from the waves? Although Hannah Buschert and Erik Ostrander have led birding trips all over the world, they are making their FeatherFest debut at this year’s FeatherFest. Join them to get the basics down on shorebirds and waterbirds on this field trip along some of the great shorebirding sites around the Galveston area. Topics may include birding basics, identification, eBird, species life history, and more. Bring…
Find out more »We offer this trip to those who would like a slower paced trip to Houston Audubon’s two world famous sanctuaries, Smith Oaks, and Boy Scout Woods. Although this is still a mostly walking trip, we will allow time to stand and/or sit to observe the splendor that is High Island birding. We schedule this trip for late afternoon to catch any lingering migrants and catch afternoon arrivals who have spent 10+ hours flying nonstop across the Gulf of Mexico. From…
Find out more »Join Hannah and Erik to one of the best locales for finding numerous varieties of waterbirds, East Beach. We begin with a drive down Boddecker Rd through the East End Lagoon Nature Preserve, catching views of a precious and increasingly rare ecosystem. We will explore 684 acres of Galveston’s largest undeveloped habitat including one of the few remaining sizable tracts of coastal prairie. The site contains both tidal and nontidal wetlands, beach dunes, a freshwater pond, black mangroves and upland…
Find out more »This trip takes you to a private property owned by the Galveston Bay Foundation (GBF) and not generally open to the public. GBF has conserved over 13,000 acres of critical coastal habitat in and around Galveston Bay. For decades, groundwater pumping in the region caused massive subsidence and contributed to the loss of wetlands. That coastal erosion meant wetlands around the bay sank into the water. Like many parts of Galveston Island, Sweetwater Preserve has sustained severe erosion. A 1,000-foot oyster reef project is part of larger restoration efforts in which the foundation has planted marsh along the shoreline. The reef protects the marsh from more degradation and protects the 464-acre property. This property includes a mixture of habitats including coastal prairie, estuarine marsh, salt flats, freshwater wetlands, brackish wetlands, and coastal woodlots.
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