Montana Keeps on Rolling, Travels for 2007, February 27, 2007, The Zoo

There is a fabulous zoo in Brownsville Texas, the Gladys Porter Zoo. I have been wanting to go visit for a couple of years, and somehow it never happened, so this year we made it happen. We picked a day we hoped would not be too hot (funny after all the cool and wet weather we have been having, eh??). We were thrilled that when we got to the zoo it was slightly overcast. It was a great photo day, no sun glare to deal with. They had a number of animals that we had not seen before, the animals were displayed in natural settings, some of the viewing areas were behind glass and we were quite delighted with how close we actually were to the animals, sometimes only a few feet seperated us from wild cats. Between 3 couples we took well over 500 photos! Yep, it was quite the photo op!

Click here for the slide show for the Gladys Porter Zoo, there are 25 photos, of the most unusual animals, or animals that we enjoyed being close to, or that had babies.I have tried to identify each photo, and on some I have information on the animal, such as land of origin.

Google took away slide shows in 2016, I have added the photos right here, ALL 25 of em!

Greater Flamingos, other wise known as Caribbean, about 4 foot tall, brilliant in color.

Mother and baby Gorilla, she kept her baby back (as in away) from other Gorillas and humans!  Photos were difficult to get.

We enjoyed the landscaping, it was very well done.

More pretty landscaping.

Stanley Crane, AKA Blue Crane or Paradise Crane, from South Africa.

This guy, like many other animals in the zoo was taking a siesta. Sun Bear, from Asian Rain Forest.

Baby Camel, in the Petting Zoo area, his birthday was not posted, but he look awfully wobbly on his legs.

Bornean Bearded Hog, from the Indonesian island of Borneo, just north of Sulawesi.

Saddle-Billed Stork, Tropical Africa.

Tiger Siesta, you can see the glare of the glass in the bottom right.  About 6 foot from us, could have cared less!

Bongo, African Forest Antelope.

Grey Crowned Crane, from Africa.

Giraffe, they have quite a crowd, eh?

African Serval Cat. There is glass between this cat and the public. When we walked up to this exhibit, a bird was on the public side of the glass and the cat was trying to catch it!

Mandrill Monkey, from Africa. Red nose and blue cheeks, he was something to look at!

A lion siesta.  There was glass between us and these big cats, however, if you were to measure the actual distance, they were about 4 feet away from us.

Pigmy Hippopotamus.

Mamma Baboon grooming her baby.

Black Swan, the official bird of Western Australia

Kangaroo

We thought the rock formations were interesting and well done, we particularly liked the turquoise blue veins.

Mandarin Duck, Asian species, this is a male, the female is pretty much plain brown.

Scarlet Ibis, from South America.

This is a Colombian black spider monkey with an infant, she, like the mamma gorilla, was reluctant to let us get a good photo.

Spider monkey swinging from 2 ropes, tail on one, arms and legs on the other. Habitat is the coastal forests of Mexico, Central America, and of South America.