SPACEPHOTOS

(02/26/1999) -- A female red-breasted merganser paddles in the rippled water of the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, which shares a boundary with the Kennedy Space Center. Male mergansers have a green head, gray sides, white neck ring and rusty breast. One of three mergansers commonly found on salt water, it ranges from northern lakes and tundra ponds, wintering principally on the ocean and in salt bays. The 92,000-acre refuge 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