Merritt Island Revisited

Merritt Island Wildlife Refuge

Photos.

Merritt Island Wildlife Refuge is one of those places I occasionally see in magazines or on TV: it is wild and "jungly", though accessible enough for someone willing to get a vehicle dusty on a dirt road. The volunteers in the Visitor Center are cheerful and willing to answer the inane questions that most of of ask, like "Is that a water mocassin outside in the swamp?". (It wasn't). It looked like a striped garter snake to me, probably easily identifiable to one familiar with the snakes of Florida. I'm not likely to be that person anytime soon.

Merritt Island Wildlife Refuge

I persuaded Bob to do the quarter-mile loop on the boardwalk, but after three-plus decades together, he's gotten me spooked thinking about what could fall out of trees or slip up through the cracks in the planks. The songbirds were loud and lovely, but I couldn't find even one in the canopy of palms and other trees. I did take a look at an osprey (not exactly a songbird!) through a viewer set up outside the Visitor Center.

The wetlands were not as full as I had expected after last week's rains, but we did see a lot of waterfowl and plenty of alligators. I was hoping for a roseate spoonbill, the very first bird I ever looked up in a field guide. I saw one on my first visit to the refuge way back when we first starting coming to this area in the late 90s.

Birders were out in full force for a Monday. Some sported shirts from various birding destinations and most were wearing the obligatory hat. I'm a birder wannabe, except for the garb, but I'm not willing to wade through muck and weeds to see a bird or get a photo, and I seem to be too lazy to acquire much knowledge. My driver has trained me to take pretty good photos out of a moving car, and that's what I did yesterday.