Merritt Island NWR

This is an overview of the Merritt Island area in general. We'll do reviews of smaller areas in other field notes. 

We've gone a few times and it's hard to sum up because Meritt Island is more of a region than a destination. More or less it's the land reserved near NASA for spacecraft debris to potentially fall on woodland creatures instead of what would otherwise be lots of condos by now. The place most people would consider "the" destination is the wildlife drive - personally I think you miss the vast majority of birds if you're driving instead of walking and you'll only see the kinds of birds that don't scare easily like egrets and herons. However the trail behind the welcome center is pretty nice - we've seen quite a few species of birds here. And I got a nice hat!

We're still figuring this area out but in general this is the lay of the land: The north part of the main island is what you'd generall consider Merrit Island and it's mostly mangrove with forest mixed in. The south part of the island is NASA and an airforce base then furhter south is typical residential areas. If you keep driving across the north part to the beach you hit Canaveral National Seashore - it's 24 miles of barrier island the ends at the top at New Smyrna Beach and Ponce Inlet. It's impressively remote and wild - very very unusual for Florida and worth it just to see that if you've lived in Florida long enough to get sick of condos. On the beach itself we haven't seen a huge variety of shorebirds as much as it being interesting to see them in their natural place. Watching sandpipers fly unimpeded along vast stretches of beaches stopping at drift wood to each barnacles - you don't really see that at beaches. That area betwen the island and the mainland is what they call "Indian River" - a brackish lagoon and a name stamped on endless bags of oranges as a marketing slogan. There are some interesting birding spots along this that we haven't expored yet.