February 13, 2012

We are only about 150 miles south of where we were this morning because we spent most of the day at Merritt Island Wildlife Refuge. We saw a lot of birds and duck plus one large animal. The land was set aside as a buffer for the Kennedy Space Center.  Most of the land is either salt marsh, fresh water marsh or mud flats with lots and lots of water.

Salt marsh:

Mud flat:

mm

We saw a lot of duck. This is one was unusual because it had a white bill.

Here is a great egret

Herons:

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Sarah, there were even little white butterflies.

There were white birds that roosted in the trees.

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The coolest bird was the white pelican. There were hundreds of them. Some were flying and landing and many were eating. I have 2 great videos showing them but I don't know how to get it onto the blog so I'll just show it to you when we get home. On the one bird you can see his pouch filled with food.

The really greatest thing we saw was an alligator. It was sunning itself by the side of the path that we were walking on. I just hoped that he didn't wake up or get hungry as we were passing. This was in the wild and there were no fences.

And another view.

The only other thing we did was to go to 2 used book stores and a quilt shop.