SPACEPHOTOS

(03/01/1999) -- The furious beating wings of a blue-winged teal launch it from the water as another swims calmly beneath it in the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, which shares a boundary with Kennedy Space Center. Inhabiting marshes, shallow ponds and lakes from British Columbia, Quebec and Newfoundland to North Carolina, the Gulf Coast and southern California, the teal winters as far south as South America. 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