KSC-2009-2600

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. –Black-necked stilts look as if they're doing handstands on their mirror images in the shallow water of the Turn Basin behind the NASA News Center at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The species inhabits salt marshes and coastal bays in the East, ranging along the Atlantic Coast from Delaware and the Carolinas to northern South America. Kennedy shares a boundary with the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge that includes salt-water estuaries, brackish marshes, hardwood hammocks and pine flatwoods. The diverse landscape provides habitat for more than 310 species of birds, 25 mammals, 117 fishes and 65 amphibians and reptiles. Photo credit: NASA/Ben Smegelsky