KSC-00pp0672

While the sandhill crane parents search for food in front of the Vehicle Assembly Building, their still-featherless baby nearby tests its voice. The cranes have been a constant sight in the Launch Complex 39 area during the month of May. Sandhill cranes range from Siberia, Alaska and Arctic islands to Michigan, Minnesota and California; from Florida to Texas. They prefer large freshwater marshes, prairie ponds and marshy tundra. KSC shares a boundary with the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, which encompasses 92,000 acres that are 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