Alligator Farm
The Alligator Farm, St. Augustine, Florida, is definitely worth a springtime trip for any bird photographer, watcher or enthusiast. Founded as a zoo in 1893, the Farm has specimens of all 23 crocodilians in its collection, a number of birds, albino or white alligators and, the reason I was there, hundreds of nesting birds of many different species.
I had been following the happenings at the Farm on its list serve for a couple of years, and knew, just as anyone did who followed the postings, what was going on with which species as they arrived, began mating rituals, built nests, laid eggs, hatched them out, fledged their young and, finally, left. It is as a bird rookery that the Farm holds magical fascination for photographers and others, as proximity to them, often a couple of feet as they land on the boardwalk’s railings or nest, display, argue over territorial intrusions, gather nesting materials, mate and feed young sometimes just out of reach. Great Egrets and Wood Storks nest high in the trees and large lenses are often useful. However, several Cattle and Snowy Egrets and Tricolor Herons nest so close that no more than a medium telephoto is required, and, depending on the digital factor of your camera, perhaps not even that.
Few of the photographs require explanation. One evening on my return visit, when the other photographers were elsewhere concentrated, I noticed a Great Egret in a nest, which had three chicks, the youngest of which had been pecked to death by its siblings. It reached over and picked up the dead chick, I assumed to toss it out of the nest, but instead began to align it for swallowing as it would with a fish. After several minutes of repositioning, that is exactly what happened - cannibalism among the Great Egrets.
One of the Tricolor Herons nesting close to the boardwalk hatched a chick at the end of my first visit. On my return, the others had hatched as well. Each time I passed the nest I checked to see whether the chicks were visible, but there almost always was a parent actively sitting. On my final morning, I had decided to wait for these chicks and those in a nearby Snowy Egret nest to be exposed. There are several nest shots of each and a composite of the Tricolor chicks included in this gallery, some evidencing a combination of frenetic activity and low light levels as my shutter caught the action. These shots are blow-ups of a central square from larger images, as I was interested in extreme close up however it came in the composite.
Fortunately, my wife was pursuing another activity near home, and I had a fourteen day opportunity to take everything I might need without airline weight and size restrictions and head 1100 miles south on a solo trip. Next time, perhaps I can persuade her to come, and try to time my visit just a bit later as the chicks are preparing to fledge.
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