Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge and Canaveral National Seashore

 Cutting through early morning fog burning off as the rising sun brightening everything, we headed to the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge from our Titusville accommodations. 

 

We stopped at the visitor center about 15 minutes before it opened and walked the boardwalk trail there.

Green Heron engaged on a territorial struggle, Osprey sat in a snag nears its nest, Common Grackle, Red-winged Blackbird, and Blue Jay disturbed the morning silence as did the burring call of Northern Parula.

The boardwalk behind the visitor center had a railing that bordered a bit of green with a bird feeder. We gasped as Painted Bunting, one male and two female, emerged from the shrubs and took advantage of the feeders.

What a great sight! We felt so fortunate to finally get good views of these lovely birds.

We walked the boardwalk trail that wound through the hammock of orange tree, cabbage palm (the Florida state tree), saw palmetto, and giant leather fern among others.

 

 We then drove to the adjacent Canaveral National Seashore before taking the roads through the wildlife refuge on a quest for Florida Scrub-jays and were told that they are by the ranger station on the seashore road.

Before we saw any jays a covey of Northern Bobwhite ran across the pull over road by the station.

 

And just a few hundred feet down the road five Florida Scrub-jays called their raspy song and flew back and forth across the road. It was thrilling to see these indigenous birds of the Sunshine State for the first time.

 

We decided to see the shore before the rest of the refuge. The NASA Vehicle Assembly Building sits on the landscape to the south.

 A Black Vulture makes a perch of a warming sign on the way to the beach.

The beach is wide and seemingly endless.

 

We saw Ring-billed Gulls and a lone Bonaparte's Gull with a Royal Tern in the group. 

 

A lone Willet probed the sand.

 

Back in the Refuge we drove the Biolab Road and Wildlife Drive which is edged with button mangrove canal and wetlands. Birds were everywhere!

Glossy Ibis:

 

Little Blue Heron:

 

Anhinga:

Pied-billed Grebe:

Tri-colored Heron:

Common Gallinule:

Rafts of American Coot:

Reddish Egret:

 The bird blinds on the Wildlife Drive yielded lots of Blue-winged Teal, a Lesser Yellowlegs, and Willet.

And in the nearby mangrove a Sora poked out in the open for a few seconds before slipping back into the shade.

 The road is flat and so easy to drive and see birds.

American Alligator live there and several basked in the sun.

Little butterflies (and I have non idea what these beauties are) flitted and landed on the thistle and wildflowers bordering the road.

 

Merritt Island and the Canaveral Seashore in February is certainly a wondrous place to bird and to slowly enjoy nature.