SPACEPHOTOS

(05/24/2001) -- In the waters of the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, an adult black-necked stilt wades along the bank. Stilts are identified by a distinct head pattern of black and white, very long red legs, and a straight, very thin bill. They usually produce three or four brown-spotted buff eggs in a shallow depression lined with grass or shell fragments. In the nesting season they are particularly aggressive. Their habitat is salt marshes and shallow coastal bays from Delaware to northern South America in the East, and in the West freshwater marshes from Oregon and Saskatchewan to the Gulf Coast. The 92,000-acre wildlife refuge, which shares a boundary with Kennedy Space Center, 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