A flock of ducks launch into the morning sky in the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge at Kennedy Space Center.

A flock of ducks launch into the morning sky in the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge at Kennedy Space Center. The open water of the refuge provides 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. The 92,000-acre refuge is also habitat for more than 310 species of birds, 25 mammals, 117 fishes and 65 amphibians and reptiles