St. Augustine Alligator Farm

We didn't see any alligators in the wild, but we saw several at the St. Augustine Alligator Farm.  The farm has been open for over 100 years and is currently the only place in the world to have all 23 species of crocodilian on display.  We even got to see feeding time for some of the big American alligators.  That was pretty amazing to see 12 foot gators decide to be active for once.

The Alligator Farm is considered to be a zoological park.  They work closely with the University of Florida in studying and learning more about alligators and crocodiles.  In addition to the crocodilians, they have exotic birds on display and they do several presentations during the day.  We saw a couple of them and they were very informative and entertaining. 

The site is also home to a natural rookery for many types of shore birds including great egrets, cattle egrets, snowy egrets, great blue herons, tricolored herons (pictured at right), little blue herons and wood storks.  The farm does not encourage or discourage the birds from roosting here, nor do the feed them in any way.  The trees along one area of the alligator farm became popular with the birds who have been roosting there for years now.

Here are a couple of more pictures from the St. Augustine Alligator Farm:

	A bunch of young American alligators waiting for people to throw food pellets to them.
Bob standing next to Gomek.  Gomek was a crocodile who was captured in New Guinea in 1968 and came to the farm in 1990.  He died there 7 years later.  He was nearly 18 feet long and weighed a lot.

Thoughts and Recommendations

• It's a little pricey at $14.25 per adult, but it was fun.
• The shows/demonstrations are worth seeing
• Be there at 1:00 for the daily feeding of the big American alligators.  Normally they don't move much, but when it's feeding time, a good third of the 30 plus 12 foot long alligators get active.
• The rookery was really cool, but smells.  It was really amazing to be so close to so many birds in their nesting sites.  The wood storks we saw are getting to be rare birds around the country.