KSC-2011-7193

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – At NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, a bird perches atop a wood-carved owl on a dock along the NASA Causeway. The center shares a boundary with the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, consisting of 140,000 acres. The Refuge provides a wide variety of habitats: coastal dunes, saltwater estuaries and marshes, freshwater impoundments, scrub, pine flatwoods, and hardwood hammocks that provide habitat for more than 1,500 species of plants and animals, including about 331 species of birds. Photo credit: NASA_Ben Smegelsky