♪ ♪ Hello, I'm Beryl Dakers and I'm standing here in a very ordinary autumn field.

Except that a closer look we find that it isn't so ordinary after all, because a field like this one and probably like the one near your home is teeming with plant and animal life.

Today on "7:30" we're going to try to take a close look at the kind of nature that abounds in the state of South Carolina.

Our guide and teacher for the day is Rudy Mancke, natural history curator for the South Carolina Museum Commission.

Rudy, what would you expect to find in a field like this?

>> Well Beryl, this time of year what you expect to find, of course, a great deal of are plants like goldenrod, the composites, they're flowering at this time of the year, and giving lots of nectar and pollen to anybody that wants it and there are going to be lots of animals showing up for the feast.

And there will also be some animals here that are here to feed on the animals attracted to the pollen and nectar.

>> Predators.

>> Yeah, predators, and I think we can see today pretty well predator-prey relationships and how, you know, living and dying is very much a part of nature.

We've got a lot of variety here so we need to get started in a moment or two.

You've already started picking things up, I see.

>> Absolutely.

>> It's tempting.

>> What I was wondering about, though, is how you manage to focus in on the really special things because just looking at a field you're likely to overlook the natural beauty.

I think there are a couple of things.

I think one thing that people ought to do more than we do is to slow down enough to see things.

We pass things in a hurry and miss a lot.

Of course, it's good also to get some learning from the library about things that would normally be found on goldenrod this time of year, but it's very important to slow down.

There are lots of exciting things right at your doorstep.

>> We'll just have to open our eyes and look.

>> That's right, and go slowly.

Let's go this way.

♪ Beryl, hurry over here a minute before this little butterfly goes away.

This is called a golden winged skipper.

One of quite a few varieties of skippers that we've got in South Carolina.

And you see he's taking some nectar from the flowers of one of the common autumn wildflowers known as mist flower.

This flower is kind of interesting because instead of being one single flower head, there are quite a few flowers that really merge into one and that's why we know these flowers as composites.

Goldenrods and most of our autumn wildflowers are of the composite family.

The skipper is really tanking up on that nectar, refueling in a sense.

I think I see a bigger butterfly over here, a monarch!

Let me go away and catch him and we'll take a closer look at that too.

♪ Beryl, come take a look at this a minute.

I think this is one a lot bigger than the skipper.

>> What have you caught, Rudy?

Beryl, I've been really lucky.

This is unbelievable.

It couldn't have been planned much better.

I caught two butterflies that are common in South Carolina and one of them is a very distasteful butterfly to birds that might prey on it and a very beautiful one at the same time.

The monarch butterfly, a monarch because of the beauty, I suppose, and the size.

This butterfly right here is probably on the way to Mexico, Central or South America, passing through here, sipping on the goldenrods, getting some nectar, refueling in a sense, and then flying on.

>> Are they as fragile as they look?

>> This one is one of the most sturdy of the butterflies, but most of them are very fragile and I'm being very careful here.

Let me show you quickly, the difference between this bigger monarch and the smaller viceroy.

Remember this one is distasteful.

If a bird eats it, it tastes bad, and he usually spits it out.

It has black lines on the bottom of the wing that you can see there and there's no line running across that black line at all.

They're just black lines going this way, no line cutting across them.

I think we'll release this one now so we won't hurt it.

Maybe, maybe the butterfly will actually, whoops, stand still.

Flipping away, look at it go.

Fabulous flyer, and you see the way it glides.

The other butterfly that I got here, again, it's very hard to get these two together usually.

Is a smaller version.

Let's take a closer look at it here without injuring it.

Basically looks the same, the same orange, the same black, the same white, but notice that on these lines on the hind wing, there's a dark line cutting right across them.

This one is called a viceroy butterfly.

This one tastes fine to birds, but it looks like, it mimics, the bad tasting monarch and therefore many times survives where it wouldn't.

>> The birds will ignore it.

<Rudy> Right, right.

This is one of the interesting things about nature many times.

There are mimics of a poisonous animal or a distasteful animal.

And again, let's just see if this one, whoops, fly away.

This field is loaded with other things, so maybe we need to move on down and take a look at some of the plants and some of the other animals attracted to these pretty flowers.

>> Okay, you lead the way.

>> All right, we'll walk around this way.

♪ Beryl, we're walking in a field now (insects chirping) full of mainly composites.

Again, the plants with flower heads rather than single flowers.

I think this is a good place to stop just to take a look at one of the real common fall flowering plants in our state.

These are just generally known as fall asters.

Most people looking at that flower, it looks like, you know, that's a single flower.

But when you get your little magnifying glass out and look closely, each of those little things projecting up there in the center are single flowers, and each of these petals in a sense, is a single flower.

So this is a flower head, a composite, the asters.

- Those tiny little yellow things?

Those tiny little yellow things are really individual flowers.

You have to get close to appreciate it and most people, you know, don't get close so they don't realize it.

But this is one of the common fall composites.

Fall asters is a good name for it.

There are lots of others here, and we'll want to take a look, of course, at many others later.

But this is a good way to begin, I think.

This one really looks like a single flower though, doesn't it?

<Beryl> It does.

It looks like a little daisy.

<Rudy> Let's go on further and see what we can find.

Goldenrods are really common here.

So maybe we can just walk over in this direction and see what we can see.

(footfalls) Beryl, we've got to stop on the way to the goldenrods at this composite and let me show you one thing that's very interesting about these fields.

Not only do we have insects coming to get nectar and pollen from these flowers, but we also have animals like that small ambush bug that are here waiting to catch insects.

>> He's so tiny though, Rudy.

How can you even see what it is?

<Rudy> The best way to see it, if you just carry a 10 power magnifying glass in the field with you around your neck, you can hold it still and get extremely close, and, you know, if you ever want to change your perspective on the world, you just magnify these little insects a little bit and you'll see that it's just unbelievable.

The front legs are pulled back kind of like a praying mantis would hold his legs back.

The butterfly will come to sip some nectar.

He grabs it with those front legs, sticks in a tube, squirts in some digestive fluid, and then slurps out the inside of the insect and drops him and waits for another one.

A lot of times in these fields, you'll see a little butterfly just frozen in position because this guy's got him.

>> Rudy, what's that over there with the red head?

<Rudy> Look at this.

Let me put my hand behind him so we can see it a little better.

This is one of the meadow grasshoppers.

It's a female.

That little thing sticking out of the back end that looks like a saber blade is a little egg laying device.

And this little gal is sitting so still because she just shed her skin for the last time.

And now she's an adult and she'll be laying eggs fairly soon.

And, of course, after they lay eggs this time of the year, the cold will kill the adult but the eggs overwinter.

Beryl, we've looked at this female grasshopper now that's just shed her skin.

Why don't we go over and take a look at the female spider I think I saw over there with some eggs.

Okay?

>> Okay.

<Rudy> Just right behind you.

Right over this way.

(insects chirping) Move over here a minute and let me spread this open.

And I want to show you one of the more beautiful predators in my mind down here on the field.

That little ambush bug was rather small, but here is a big animal, the green lynx spider.

And this is a female very obviously because she is guarding a mass of eggs that she has recently laid.

Of course, the story is rather sad in a sense for the female, because, you see, she's not going to make it through the winter at all, but the eggs will.

This is the way nature works often is letting the eggs over winter and the adult will die.

This animal doesn't usually spin a web.

She sits on top of these flowers and picks off butterflies and other things that come to the flowers.

But she does spin a web to put her eggs in.

And there are 100 or so eggs probably there.

<Beryl> And the cocoon is regular spider silk?

<Rudy> Regular spider silk, right.

You see the green color on the thick part of the body there.

Let's see if I can turn her around a little bit.

I'm going to show you.

Can you see that green?

Here you go.

>> Beautiful!

<Rudy> That's the green part and lynx is because she hunts like a lynx.

She leaps on things like a lynx or a bobcat would do in nature.

And they are very, very common in South Carolina.

Again, most people would walk right past this kind of thing.

You've got to slow down to see things.

We've got a very exciting state to live in because there's lots of these things around.

Look at that animal.

Eight legs, eight eyes, fangs, and venom.

And that's what a spider is.

This one's not big enough to cause any problems to people.

Well, I think we were aiming for goldenrods.

<Beryl>> Let's reach it; that's a beautiful patch over here.

<Rudy> Let's go ahead and walk this way.

(leaves rustling) Beryl, let's get close to this clump of goldenrod.

We've seen so much goldenrod in here.

This one is nice mainly because it's got an animal on it that's really very, very common on goldenrod.

It's a type of beetle.

Really, we've got two animals here.

One is the... >> It's a moth, isn't it?

<Rudy> Yeah, this is a moth, a day-flying moth that comes for nectar here.

Most moths fly at night.

This one is an exception to the rule.

And this thing right here, Can you see that?

Riding on the gold is solid black in color, is one of the oil beetles, and is known as the goldenrod beetle.

And this is common again on goldenrod this time of year, all over the state.

And so anybody who goes into a field of goldenrod should be able to find plenty of these oil beetles.

Again, look at this.

There's even another variety of beetle riding the rods, so to speak, and look even further down.

This is a six spotted cucumber beetle, if you'll believe that.

That's what it is right there.

It's another variety again that's found on goldenrod.

Can you see that?

<Beryl> Absolutely, little dots.

>> Yeah, it's really 12 spotted.

But look at the moth.

Not really afraid of us too much.

You know, just again interested in nectar.

And a lot of the animals that come are looking for that.

>> There are the numerous bees that we see around here.

We've got lots of bees that come to these things.

You can get fairly close to bees this time of year when they're feeding on the nectar because they're really not bothered by you coming in.

Bumblebees, yellow jackets come.

>> Rudy, what's this over here with the purple flowers?

>> Beryl, this is another one of the composites.

This one is really a nice one, I think.

Real tall, purplish flowered, and it's known as ironweed.

And again, a plant that flowers in the autumn and is fairly attractive to insects.

There are not many around that here.

I think mainly because there's so much goldenrod here compared to the ironweed.

Again another common autumn wildflower throughout South Carolina.

Beryl, we've looked at the ironweed.

Let's go back to goldenrod just a minute, because I found something earlier that we ought to take a look at.

This is a stem of a goldenrod that was living last year this time.

>> What's the knot?

>> Aha, the knot is, of course, very distinctive and it looks kind of like a tumor.

And in a sense it is.

It's known as a gall, G-A-L-L, gall, and it's caused by an insect, a little fly that laid an egg in this stem.

When the egg hatched it secreted a chemical substance that caused the cells around it to grow rapidly, very much like a cancerous tumor.

The growth usually stops at this shape.

The little fly lives on the goodies inside that the plant produces, spends the winter in here and hatches out next year as an adult fly, and then, of course, the process starts all over again.

Galls are really common on lots of different plants.

You walk by them a lot this time of year, come back in the winter, and things like this really stand out.

>> And let's go on back in the back to the tall grass.

>> Let's leave that here and we'll see what else we can find.

(footfalls) (insects chirping) Beryl, let's take a look at some flowering plants that we don't think of as flowering plants very often.

And I think the best place to stop is by this large clump of beard grass or plume grass.

>> Whoo, I can't believe how deep it is back here.

>> Get over there.

Isn't that unbelievable?

That's one of the larger grasses that we've got.

Some people call this sugar cane beard grass because of its size, and, of course, sugar cane is one of the grasses.

Those are really fruits on the top but this thing has flowers.

This is one of our flowering plants and even though they're not really showy, they're still flowering plants.

Very common in moist situations like we're in.

Take a look up front here and you see another one of the grasses again with fruit on it that, of course, can be bloomed rather nicely as you can see when I pull it off.

This is called broom sedge, and I think most people around the state are very familiar with the fact that people used to and many times still do use these, tie them together to make brooms out of.

Broom sedge.

There's another one over this way closely related to the grasses called bull rushes you see, with the heads nodding down.

>> That's the biblical bull rush?

>> Well, that's closely related to the biblical bullrush, right.

We've got them right here in South Carolina.

Again, they like moist situations like by rivers which, as you remember in the bible that's where it was growing.

This is basically the same moist situation.

There's some other things back here I want to show you, though.

We won't pass one small thing.

Let's just take a look right over here for a minute and see if we can get close to something that many people probably have seen and never have realized what they were looking at.

It looks like a little bit of spit somebody has left.

I was told as a kid that it was bat spit and it was very dangerous.

It's not that at all.

What this is is a little house that's very ingeniously constructed by one of the sap sucking insects known as a spittle bug.

Okay, pretty good name for it.

>> Where's the insect?

>> The insect is really hiding inside of this and let me see if I can pull some of this away and see if I can spot him.

I don't see him in here but he's left this behind.

We bumped it as we walked by and probably knocked the little fellow off but this spit-looking material is produced from the sap of this plant and the insect, in a sense, blows bubbles in it, so to speak, to form the house for protection.

And again this is a blackberry vine.

They do like to get on blackberries but they're really on most any kind of soft skinned plant that they can suck sap easily from.

Spittle bugs are kind of nice.

There's one beautiful caterpillar right over there that if you can reach over and pull that closer to us maybe we can take a closer look at.

>> Oh, actually, Rudy, it looks like a leaf.

<Rudy> Isn't that unbelievable?

<Beryl> Gorgeous.

<Rudy> This is one of the sphinx moth caterpillars and again, this is the time of the year when this animal is finishing feeding and is thinking now about forming a cocoon or pupating in the ground and probably hatching out next year as an adult.

Beautiful, beautiful animal.

I think if we can pull this down, let the sun hit it.

Look at the coloration pattern on that.

This little knob on the rear end is not a stinging device.

It's typical of most all of the sphinx moth caterpillars.

They're called sphinx moth caterpillars because they usually, when you poke them, pull their heads inside their body to some degree and look like the great sphinx that we know of from Egypt.

Beautifully marked.

Those look like eyes along the side, don't they?

Hey, it's gorgeous.

This is an interesting plant that it's on too, Beryl.

I think if you take a look up at this end you'll see that the seeds in this plant are protected in a little box-like contraption and the common name for this plant of which we have quite a few varieties is seed boxes.

<Beryl> And they're actually hard little shells.

<Rudy> Right, uh-huh.

When this was flowering, it has a yellow flower on it.

Now the flower's gone, and you take this little box off and crush it, and out come thousands of seed.

See, Beryl it just crushes, the top comes off, and inside are thousands and thousands of little seed, next year's seed boxes.

>> Rudy, look at the spider.

>> Oh, boy.

Let's take a closer look at that one.

That's one of the larger spiders that we've got in the state, and she's right in the center of her web now.

It's a garden spider, and it's a big one, probably a female.

Again, very large in size.

Known as a writing spider, I think you can see, obviously, because of these lines in the web down here that's typical of that variety of spider.

She feeds on insects that she captures in the web.

It does have fangs and venom.

This is poisonous, of course, but generally not any great problem to humans.

And again, when winter comes she lays an egg mass and then dies.

The egg mass is what gets her over winter.

I think one thing we might be able to do is to take a look at this animal feeding.

If we can get a grasshopper to ease up in the web, we might be able to see this.

Hopefully we can get it to work good.

Boom!

She comes up, uses her back legs to wrap silk around the grasshopper.

See?

Automatic response.

And after she gets it wrapped up and trapped, then she injects some poison with a pair of fangs special made for that purpose.

It digests the inside of the insect's body, and then she sucks out the juices of that insect.

There she is injecting, see?

A little bit of digestive fluid, see?

And once - >> That's amazing!

<Rudy> It is amazing, and once she gets it, then she comes back to the center of the web, and she looks like she's probably going to have a problem now, because the grasshopper is so near the center of her web, she wants to secure it.

Spiders are great friends to humans, because they are our best hedge against insects taking over the world.

Spiders feed on insects almost totally, and they do a very fine job of it as you just saw.

<Beryl> So we shouldn't just indiscriminately kill them?

<Rudy> No, I think if you ever want to keep flies and other things down in the house, it's good to have a few of these out and around, and many of these are found in gardens and are often called garden spiders because of that, but again, let me just get close and you can see the size of my hand compared to the spider.

This is a big spider.

It's one of the largest spiders we've got, and it's found statewide.

I think we missed one thing behind you over here that you might want to take a closer look at.

The garden spider over there is a female.

She probably hasn't laid eggs yet, she's got a pretty large abdomen, but look right behind you there.

>> Oh!

<Rudy> You see what I see?

>> Yes!

<Rudy> We missed that a minute ago when we were looking at the plume grass or beard grass but those are egg cases.

<Beryl> In fact, there are two of them here.

>> Garden spiders, right.

You see that they look like balloon shapes, upside down balloons, and they're suspended in a fine network of webbing, and that cocoon, of course, is well made to to withstand any of the cold of winter, and those grass stalks are going to be able to withstand the winds of winter, and so these spiders have a pretty good chance of making it through the winter and then hatching out next spring and repopulating this area as far as garden spiders are concerned.

There are hundreds of little developing spiders in there, and, of course, very few of those who make it to become an adult like that big one that we just saw a moment ago.

There's so many things to see here, Beryl.

Maybe we need to just walk on this way a moment.

Let me lead the way just in case there's any snake here.

This would be a pretty good place for it.

<Beryl> And I've got the net.

>> You've got the net, right.

Let's go on this way.

(leaves rustling, insects chirping) ♪ Beryl, here are a couple of predators not preying on each other, but mating.

This is the time of the year for that in many of the insects, because normally, the adult insect doesn't make it over winter.

The eggs are what gives you life next year, and the male and female assassin bug, this time, are mating on this composite, and she will go ahead and lay eggs, and they will die, probably, of course, the adults, before winter is over.

The eggs will be here next year.

Very, very interesting thing going on right before our very eyes.

Very important part of nature.

Let's go on and see what else we can find.

We're in a different area now.

I think it's pretty obvious with this lower material.

This is knotweed, and it's a little more moist down here, so we should see some different animals.

Let me borrow that net just a minute, and I think I'll show you one real, real close.

Let's see if I got it.

Yeah!

<Beryl> What is it?

>> Take a look.

This lets us know, really, that this used to be a lot more moist than it is today, because this is one of our dragonflies.

This is really a nice dragonfly.

It's not one of the largest ones that we've got, but it's one of the pretty ones.

We've got over 150 kinds of dragonflies in South Carolina.

>> Rudy, Is that a stinger?

Do they sting?

>> No.

A lot of people think that this is a stinging device, because it's a long, skinny abdomen but there's nothing back there to sting at all.

Well, I'm, you know, I'm touching it now.

I wouldn't do it if there was a stinger.

The jaws on some of the bigger dragonflies are so large that they could, you know, cause problems if the animal were to get close to you, but they're no great problem.

These are our friends.

Again, feeding on things like mosquitoes and deer flies and horse flies, which give us great problems, people who walk in the woods.

Look at the red color on the back there.

>> Really pretty.

>> Large eyes, and I think, you know, it's very interesting.

The eyes are made up of, instead of one single eye, made up of quite a number of small eyes, maybe 20,000 individual eyes in each one of those large eyes, and this animal catches his food by sight.

Anything small enough, it's moving, he grabs and takes it.

This is a young man.

The reproductive organs are way up here in the body on that little bulge, and this animal spends most of his life in the water, and then comes out as an adult grows wings, and flies around until his life ends.

>> Rudy, there's so many plants here but they seem to be almost organized as though they were lined up according to height.

<Rudy> Well, in this case you're exactly right.

I think the altitude of the land here has a lot to do with what plants grow here, because this low area is more moist, usually.

It's a little dry today, and that lets knotweed, like the plant that we see so commonly around us, grow, and yet, as you go further up on the hill there, you can see the goldenrods and other things that really like a little moisture, but they don't like to have their feet, really, in standing water most of the time.

This material around us can put up with water, really, year round.

this is just a little drier than normal, and that's why we're able to walk through it so easily.

So you're right, you know, you can read a lot just from what kind of plants are growing there.

>> You call this stuff knotweed.

Why?

>> Well, a lot of people think that it's that name because it looks like a string that somebody has just tied a series of knots in, and each of those knots, in a sense, is an individual flower you see on a little stalk.

<Beryl> They are so delicate.

>> You get your magnifier out, and again, anybody who wants one of these, a little plastic one, a dollar fifty, it'll change your outlook on life.

And get close to that flower, and it's just as beautiful as any flower could be, even though it's very small.

We miss a lot, because we live in only one world, and we can get into that smaller world just with a dollar fifty investment, and it's good to carry in the woods with you.

There are lots of things to see.

Let's just keep looking.

>> Okay.

(footfalls) (insects chirping) >> Oh boy, here's one more thing we need to take a look at.

Really, we've seen this earlier, but now look what's going on right here.

There's a green link spider.

That's easy to identify by that green color, but look at the egg mass.

>> My gosh, it's hatched already.

>> That's right.

These have already hatched, and this is early for them, and they won't have quite as good a chance as winter comes on as those that have stayed in the cocoon a little bit longer.

>> Look at those little tiny red things.

>> Isn't that unbelievable?

Large numbers of them, and again, most of these won't make it, now, to adulthood.

Most of them are going to die before they become adults like they're mother.

<Beryl> That's really sad.

<Rudy> That's interesting.

>> Rudy, you know, it's so peaceful here.

I feel as though we could stay all day.

I think that's a feeling that we get, mainly because we're sort of big animals, and there's nothing here preying on us, but to the animals we've seen today, this is a life and death situation.

Fields like this are where they live and die, and really live only a short length of time.

I think it's interesting to note that we're a part of this all, and that death is a part of life, and it's something that we have trouble dealing with.

These insects and spiders don't have any trouble dealing with it at all.

We're a part of nature and that's something that we need to be reminded of often.

>> Now, what's so remarkable is that the things we've seen just seem beautiful and almost incomprehensible, but it's something that all of us can see at almost any time.

>> Well, I think you can go in your backyard or down the road to a field with some goldenrod in it and other things this time of year and have just as exciting experience as if you went to South America or Asia or wherever.

There are exciting places close to home, and I hope people will take advantage of that.

>> I hope so too.

I also hope they'll take advantage of the fact that they can join us again next month, when we go beachcombing in November.

Of course, Rudy, you'll be back with us leading the way.

>> Looking forward to it.

>> I hope you'll join us too.

In the meantime, have a good weekend.

Let's keep looking.

<Rudy> Okay.

♪ ♪