NatureNotes

Many of the early blooking flowers in South Carolina are asiatic species.

Rudy recommends The Handbook of Nature Study by Anna Botsford Comstock as a good general book for nature study.

There is an old folk tale behind the name "snake doctors" as applied to dragonflies.

The cedar waxwing (Bombycilla cedrorum) is a member of the family Bombycillidae or waxwing family of passerine birds. It is a medium-sized, mostly brown, gray, and yellow.

The southern short-tailed shrew (Blarina carolinensis) is a gray, short-tailed shrew that inhabits the eastern United States.

Parasitoid wasps are a large group of hymenopteran superfamilies, with all but the wood wasps (Orussoidea) being in the wasp-waisted Apocrita. As parasitoids, they lay their eggs on or in the bodies of other arthropods, sooner or later causing the death of these hosts.

Some common plants in South Carolina were introduced, purposely or accidentally, and have made a place in the ecosystem. They are called "naturalized."

A listener finds a cocoon with a small hole in it...

The ring-billed gull (Larus delawarensis) is a medium-sized gull. The genus name is from Latin Larus which appears to have referred to a gull or other large seabird. The specific delawarensis refers to the Delaware River.

Paulownia tomentosa, common names princess tree, empress tree, or foxglove-tree, is a deciduous hardwood tree in the family Paulowniaceae, native to central and western China. It is an extremely fast-growing tree with seeds that disperse readily, and is a persistent exotic invasive species in North America, where it has undergone naturalisation in large areas of the Eastern US.

The varied carpet beetle (Anthrenus verbasci) is a 3 mm-long beetle belonging to the family Dermestidae. They are a common species, often considered a pest of domestic houses and, particularly, natural history museums, where the larvae may damage natural fibers and can damage carpets, furniture, clothing, and insect collections.

A listener shares a moving story about discovering her love of nature.

Belocephalus is a genus of short-winged coneheads in the family Tettigoniidae. Coneheads are a type of bush crickets or katydids. There are about eight described species in Belocephalus.

The name "chipmunk" comes from an Ojibwe word which translates literally as "one who descends trees headlong." First described by Mark Catesby in his 1743 The Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands, the chipmunk was eventually classified as Sciurus striatus by Linnaeus, meaning "striped squirrel" in Latin. The scientific name was changed to Tamias striatus, meaning "striped s...

The North American river otter (Lontra canadensis), also known as the northern river otter and river otter, is a semiaquatic mammal that only lives on the North American continent, along its waterways and coasts. An adult North American river otter can weigh between 5.0 and 14 kg (11.0 and 30.9 lb). The river otter is protected and insulated by a thick, water-repellent coat of fur.

A listener, cleaning up the roadside, finds the remains of an opposum.

Clathrus columnatus, commonly known as the columnar stinkhorn, is a saprobic species of basidiomycete fungus in the family Phallaceae.

Ruddy shares a quote from Richard Jeffries' novel, "The Dewy Morn."

A family calls on Rudy to help identify some of the things that they found walking in the Appalachian Mountains.

The anhinga (Anhinga anhinga), sometimes called snakebird, darter, American darter, or water turkey, is a water bird of the warmer parts of the Americas.

Yellowjacket or yellow jacket is the common name in North America for predatory social wasps of the genera Vespula and Dolichovespula. Members of these genera are known simply as "wasps" in other English-speaking countries. Most of these are black and yellow like the eastern yellowjacket, Vespula maculifrons.

Groundhog Day is a popular North American tradition observed in the United States and Canada on February 2. It derives from the Pennsylvania Dutch superstition that if a groundhog emerges from its burrow on this day and sees its shadow due to clear weather, it will retreat to its den, and winter will go on for six more weeks; if it does not see its shadow because of cloudiness, spring will arrive...

Chert is a hard, fine-grained sedimentary rock composed of microcrystalline or cryptocrystalline quartz, the mineral form of silicon dioxide. Chert is characteristically of biological origin, but may also occur inorganically as a chemical precipitate or a diagenetic replacement, as in petrified wood.

Baccharis halimifolia is a North American species of shrubs in the family Asteraceae. It is native to Nova Scotia, the eastern and southern United States (from Massachusetts south to Florida and west to Texas and Oklahoma), eastern Mexico (Nuevo León, San Luis Potosí, Tamaulipas, Veracruz, Quintana Roo), the Bahamas, and Cuba.

Found in the southern and eastern United States, the upland chorus frog is found from the state of New Jersey to the Florida panhandle; west to eastern Texas and southeast Oklahoma.