KSC-00pp0244

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FLA. -- Near a road at Kennedy Space Center, a red-shouldered hawk perches on a weathered tree stump. Red-shouldered hawks are large, long-winged, with rust-barred underparts, reddish shoulders, a narrowly banded tail, and a translucent area ner the tip of the wing. It ranges from Minnesota and New Brunswick south to the Gulf Coast, including Florida. It prefers deciduous woodlands, especially where there is standing water as in swampy woods and bogs. Kennedy Space Center shares a boundary with the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge that is a habitat for more than 331 species of birds, 31 mammals, 117 fishes, and 65 amphibians and reptiles. The marshes and open water of the refuge provide wintering areas for 23 species of migratory waterfowl, as well as a year-round home for great blue herons, great egrets, wood storks, cormorants, brown pelicans and other species of marsh and shore birds, as well as a variety of insects.