And more birds...

We took advantage of a $2.50 bus ride offered by the Merritt Island Visitors Center through the Cape Canaveral National Wildlife Refuge.  In the 1960s, when NASA decided to locate the space program on Merritt Island, they thought they would be using nuclear propulsion to go to the moon. That idea was changed quickly, but not before they bought way too much land on the island.  Locals persuaded them to allow a national wildlife refuge to be established on unneeded land.  YAY!  Our bus tour through the refuge lasted almost 3 hours, stopped whenever anyone wanted to watch something or take pictures, and had a very informed guide.  It was great. 
SO- we saw ---

More tricolored herons.

Pied-billed grebes swimming and grazing for grasses in the very shallow (inches deep) water.

A very rare treat was seeing a Reddish Egret.  They are partially recovered from the plume trade - only 2000 breeding pairs are in the US.  We have seen only 1 other.  These are the most active fishers of all of the egrets.  They sprint after fish or stalk fish by holding their wings open to create shade for better visibility.  This guy chased, ran and danced through the water, and flapped his wings endlessly while we watched.  Stalking...

And chasing...  You can see his reddish color better here.

This little green heron was fishing from the overhanging branches of a mangrove. Their short legs keep them from wading as they fish, so they prefer to watch and spear their prey from low hanging branches.

Look at the white flower carefully.  The top right hand pedals are actually a Great Southern White butterfly.

Finally a close up of a Roseate Spoonbill!  We have only seen these beauties from the boat after we have passed southward through the Haulover Canal.  This fellow was feeding in a narrow strip of water along the road.  The dark pink stripe of weathers on his upper wing indicate that it is an adult.

You'll just have to believe me on this one - it is a Great Horned Owl.  At 22", it is impressive, even from this distance.  Our guide told us that the owls generally will take a nest over from eagles - apparently the only birds eagles are afraid of. They will take prey as large as rabbits or ducks.  Look carefully and you can spot the "horn" tuffs.  We have heard these owls behind our house  - sometimes very close - but I have never seen one before.

We spotted lots of other birds, raccoons, and alligators. Oh. And wild boars. BIG black haired boars.  It seems that the boars do a lot of damage to the park, so they are the one exception of wildlife that is allowed to be removed from the park.  All 1200 or so of them each year.  But - the park will not allow the killing of any animals in the park confines. So, licenses are granted to a few folks every year to remove the live animals from the park.  The park doesn't exactly care what happens then.... Anyway, can you IMAGINE  trapping and removing 1200 big black boars from a national forest? Every year? I can't!

 

 The Cape Canaveral National Seashore is also on Merritt Island.  We drove there, stopping along a couple of the 13 parking lots.  There were more people on the beach than this indicates, but it was a windy day.

 



We also stopped at lot #13 - the nudist beach.  Yulp, they were there, mingled in with the bathing suited beach goers.  Actually, there were about 4 old men, walking the beach, showing off their "wares".  No, we did not "do as the Romans do"!

Leaving the seashore road, we were slowed by stopped cars.  A VERY LARGE alligator, maybe 15 feet, was sleepily sunning itself on the side of the road.  He could not have cared in the least about the stopped cars.  But I will say that not a soul was outside of their car - all pictures were being taken from a window or out of the sunroof! LOL

After all of our nature adventuring, we drove down to Cocoa (20 minutes) and did a little shopping at the mall there.  Woman cannot live by nature walks alone!