KSC-04pd0204

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FLA. - Two young Little Blue Herons perch on a limb in the underbrush at a site on NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. These herons inhabit freshwater swamps and lagoons in the South; coastal thickets on islands in the North. Adults are slate blue with maroon necks. Young birds acquiring adult plumage have a piebald appearance. The Center shares a boundary with the 92,000-acre Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, which is a habitat for more than 310 species of birds, 25 mammals, 117 fishes and 65 amphibians and reptiles. The marshes and open water of the refuge also 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.