Today we wanted to see more of the Titusville area to the North. Our first stop was at the Prichard House – a famous local landmark. To us it looked remarkably like the house on the hill from Psycho.
Moving on from there we called in at the Merrit Island Wildlife Refuge Park, which surrounds the Kennedy Space Centre. While we were there we went to the Mannatee Obervation Deck, where we had a good view of up to four manatee swimming in a channel which linked 2 lakes. While we were there a pod of dolphins swam up the channel. Then Ron spotted a racoon foraging near the waters edge on the far bank of the channel. When we left there we followed the backwoods trail (another word for rough road) along the Inlet shore line, looking for alligators and wading birds. The trail was about 5 miles long and for about 4½ miles we saw nothing much of interest apart from Osprey hunting for fish in the inlet, we must have seen about 6 – 8 pairs as we drove along. Circling slowly, hovering and then plummeting down to grasp a fish in their talons – very impressive sight. Eventually Carol spotted our first alligator, floating with just the top of its head out of the water. After that Ron spotted a large alligator basking in the sun about 20 feet away from us. This was followed by seeing a huge alligator sunning itself. In all we saw 5 alligators up close. We also saw a number of waterbirds, ibis, glossy ibis, little and large herons, a wood stork and egrets. On the roadside we saw several hawks, which we have identified as Roadside Hawks.
We were also hoping to see Roseate Spoonbill. We had a casual conversation with a lady in a car coming the other way. When we mentioned this she, somewhat condescendingly said something like “Oh you poor dullwitted foreigner. My dear boy, its far too early for Spoonbills”. 100 yards after she passed us Carol spotted a Roseate Spoonbill flying by (yes I have the photo evidence to prove it). This was a very enjoyable day, although a bit long and tiring.
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