As someone who lives in Alabama, I fully agree with Snow Leopard's decision to add Montgomery Zoo to your list. The new elephant exhibit at Birmingham is excellent (and apparently the U.S.'s only bachelor herd) and they have a great collection of cat species (albeit in not-so-great enclosures), but Montgomery Zoo is overall a better zoo. It's incredibly beautiful, and contains huge mixed-species exhibits (one each for North America, Asia, and Africa) that are breathtaking to watch. If you have time, go to Montgomery Zoo!
Palm Beach Zoo off I75 is between Brevard Zoo and Miami. Apparently you are not into reptiles and there are many privately own exibits in Florida.
1st Zoo Lowry Park ent fee $24.75 5/10 The zoo was overwhelmingly dominated by a Chinese New Year light show installation. I have no doubt that this is a great night time visual experience and the zoo charges an additional fee for attendance so well done on maximising income from the zoo. It's just that the installation is everywhere and takes away from any illusion of emersion and focus on the animal and or the exhibit. I also spent some time with a intern who was volunteering at the zoo for 3 months working 40-50 hours per week. Duties included work that would normally be done by paid employees. I am sure that this would not be allowed in OZ, how long before interns outnumber paid employees?
Lowry Park Zoo Best exhibits 1st Cheetah exhibit, very simple with a water moat barrier for a retired male who was actively exploring the exhibit and drinking from the moat. 2nd Large Aviary with flamingoes, I asked around and nobody seemed to know if they had their wings clipped, I was hoping to see them fly. I have never seen a flamingo flying except on TV
Look like gharials to me, which would be the only crocodilians I can imagine being "trusted" in a mixed exhibit with such an endangered small cervid! Still a rather odd and geographically incongruous combination (beyond representing "Asia").
Just checked the Lowry Park website, and reduakari is right: those are Indian gharials. They are critically endangered and rare in zoos; I didn't know the LPZ had them. I don't know why they chose that as a mixed-species exhibit... maybe that short wooden ledge keeps the gharials confined to the beach.
Zoo 2 Busch Gardens $17 parking $95 Entry. Live feeding, I have always thought I was for this. Now not as sure! The hippo exhibit has a brilliant underwater viewing. The water attracted a cormorant that proceeded to catch and kill app 10 fish. Brilliant visual watching the school of fish try to escape. A little confronting but manageable from a emotional prospective. While all this was going on a large bird proceeded to hunt and eat ducklings on the water surface... Watching the mother duck try to save her young was very emotional! Previously I had only ever seen a pelican eat a seagull and had no emotional reaction fir the seagull but ducklings
The cormorant did seem to exert allot of energy to catch a fish however it was successful 1 in every 5 attempts.
The holding areas for animals used for keeper demonstrations. There is allot of signage describing how each animal was not able to be released of that it enjoyed the attention. My surprise was just how small each enclosure/cage was for the individual animal. Spending extensive periods in cramped conditions and no socialising except when used for presentations...
These 0.0.3 young Gharial were imported from Madras Croc Bank and Trust in Chennai to San Diego and distributed to other collections once they put on some size.
