(05/24/2001) -- In the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, which shares a boundary with Kennedy Space Center, an anhinga takes flight. Anhingas inhabit frewshwater ponds and swamps with thick vegetation. They ranage from the Atlantic and gulf coasts from North Carolina to Texas, the Mississippi Valley north to Arkansas and Tennessee, and south to southern South America. They are also referred to as snakebirds because its body is submerged when swimming, showing only its head and long, slender neck above water. The 92,000-acre wildlife 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