(Rudy) Hu rricane Hugo ravaged South Carolina in 1989, and Bu lls Island just off the coast was one of the most he avily damaged areas.

Since Hugo, nature's healing pr ocess has been at work.

Join us as we revisit Bulls Is land next on "NatureScene."

A production of... "NatureScene" is made possible in part by a grant from Santee Cooper, where protection and improvement of our environment are equal in importance to providing electric energy.

Additional funding is provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and by viewers like you, members of the ETV Endowment of South Carolina.

♪ Hello, and welcome to "NatureScene" at Bulls Island, just north of Charleston, South Carolina.

This barrier island was ravaged by a hurricane in September of 1989.

I'm Jim Welch with naturalist Rudy Mancke, and we're back on the island to see how nature is beginning to heal itself.

Yeah, and rebound a little bit.

This will be very, very interesting, to take a look at how barrier islands act as barriers between the mainland and the storms that come in.

Hurricane Hugo really changed this place, and yet now you see that nature is coming back slowly but surely.

I like that.

That's typical of barrier islands.

This is not the first hurricane, and it won't be the last.

Nature rebounds, and you don't have to look very far to see that, Jim.

You've had a standing water impoundment here that slowly but surely, even without the storm, is beginning to fill in.

(Jim) Cattails, of course, will come in without hurricanes.

(Rudy) Stem underground and then sending up those leaves you see blowing in the breeze a little bit.

It is an interesting day with a breeze blowing through the cattails.

That's one of those changes that occurred.

A lot of the standing water impoundments here were modified by vegetation falling in.

(Jim) Rudy, look, a typical animal here on the island, a small, or baby, alligator.

(Rudy) Young alligators.

That's one of those animals that rode out the storm well.

Probably last year's young.

Look at the markings, very, very clear on the back of those little animals.

Feeding on any kind of animal in the water.

They're good at recycling fish and small snakes or amphibians, whatever they can come up with.

Look at him move through the water.

(Jim) They'll stay close to the mother for a year -- maybe one, two or three years even.

(Rudy) And go out on their own.

Look at the way he's swimming.

See the way the tail does all the pushing and legs come down by the side.

That's an animal that's typical, and on a day that's warming up, you would expect them to be out sunning.

(Jim) What are the trees coming in close up to the edge here?

(Rudy) One of the odd ones to me is a non-native one.

After Hugo, it's beginning to move out into these open areas.

Common name for that is popcorn tree because the fruit looks like popcorn, but another name is Chinese tallow tree.

(Jim) It's an exotic.

(Rudy) Brought in and escaped.

I'm afraid sometimes when the canopy is knocked down and the sunlight comes in, exotic species take over where native ones used to be.

Listen to this bird.

Look up there, perched, northern mockingbird up in the top.

I heard some sounds there behind us.

See him sitting there, yelling his head off.

(Jim) So many calls to listen to from the mocker.

(Rudy) Yeah, mimicking other birds.

[bird chirping] (Rudy) One other bird you would expect -- it's the perfect place for it, marshes, or wherever -- red-winged blackbird's nest.

There's a male higher up, calling, staking out a little bit of a territory.

This is the time of year when nests are built -- (Jim) Red patches on there.

(Rudy) -- and females are attracted.

Yeah, red epaulet.

Listen to that call.

That's an interesting one and so typical.

[bird chirping] (Rudy) In a place like this you look high and low.

I see a lot of flowers now, fresh flowers they look like, on one of the blackberries.

Usually that low growing one is called dewberry.

A lot of nectar and pollen there, and look what's coming.

(Jim) Three or four different... (Rudy) Insects galore.

(Jim) One of the butterflies.

(Rudy) American painted lady.

You can see the eyespots under the hind wing there.

Long antennae, and she's just taking that proboscis, that tongue-like proboscis, and going from flower to flower, getting a little nectar here and there.

That's energy for the little butterfly.

One of the moths, eight-spotted forester moth coming in, the black with that yellow, and white spots on it.

I see a pearl crescent over there on the other side.

(Jim) Very tiny.

(Rudy) Then bumblebees galore.

You can expect that.

The queen bumblebee's probably coming to collect pollen to eventually take back and feed the young.

(Jim) All using the dewberry.

(Rudy) A lot of activity, and again we talk about recycling.

That's a good example of one thing changing into something else.

Speaking of changes, turn around for a moment because when you turn around and look on the other side of this impoundment, I see a lot of green out there.

It is nice and green in the spring of the year, but nothing like it was before the storm.

You remember that there was a canopy there.

Tall pine trees used to cover this place.

Now they're gone, and that's changed everything that they used to shade out.

We'll be able to see that clearly as we get started.

♪ (Jim) Five thousand acres on the island and 16 miles of roads for walking and getting close to these damaged woods all around us.

(Rudy) Yeah, they have been damaged and changed.

Slowly, again, as we say, making a return.

Sandy soils here now, typical of barrier islands, really material that used to be farther up in South Carolina that was washed and dumped here.

There's one of the plants that stabilizes those piles of sand.

(Jim) Magnolia.

(Rudy) Southern magnolia, and look at it.

That was a canopy tree, but it's standing alone now.

Still alive, barely, at least one part of it's alive.

You can see those large leaves.

Sometimes that's called bull bay, that tree.

Kind of interesting connection with this part of the world and some of the names here.

(Jim) Well, this was once a magnificent maritime forest.

That tree, though, is now becoming woodpecker -- (Rudy) Work.

(Jim) -- work, yeah.

(Rudy) Look at the woodpecker working, because there were beetles in there.

That side of the tree was killed.

Beetle larvae got in there.

The woodpeckers came and began to peck, peck, peck away and change beetle, which used to be magnolia tree, into woodpecker.

Look right here, a red-bellied woodpecker.

(Jim) Oh, and look at the blush of red on the belly.

(Rudy) There's one of the few times you've ever seen red on a red-bellied woodpecker.

That is neat, up at the top.

You see skeletons of trees out there.

Great blue heron nest, look at this, in one of those dead -- I guess that's a pine.

(Jim) Not much of a nest, but that's what they do.

(Rudy) Look at that long-legged bird.

Gangly as it is, taking those pretty big sticks, see, and balancing them up there, and now standing on the nest.

It is amazing when you see that, but, again, things get changed.

Nature doesn't throw up her hands and walk away.

Things begin to come back, slowly but surely.

Plants that are here -- look right over to the side.

Here's the state tree of South Carolina and Florida, the palmetto.

Cabbage palmetto is a good common name for it.

One member of the palm family that puts up fairly well with high wind.

(Jim) They may have withstood Hugo better than the rest of the vegetation.

(Rudy) Yeah, and a few live oaks out there that are surviving.

The biggest ones, many are gone.

I see some red bays down there too.

There's an understory tree you would expect to see here.

(Jim) Look, there's the state of South Carolina's game bird, wild turkey.

(Rudy) Two of them, with beards.

Look at the beards on the front of those things.

Strolling away, they're kind of wary of us.

They love open areas like this.

I see a plant that's doing really nicely here too, that American holly with fruit on it.

Again, used to be shaded a little bit more but seems to enjoy the sunlight once the canopy was opened.

There's another turkey, bigger one.

See him going into what looks like dog fennel down there?

That is a big animal, really neat.

And vines -- look around here, Jim, vines all over the place.

When these trees went down, that gave trellises almost for these vines.

They climb up on it, they get all the sunlight they ever need, and now they've begun to dominate.

Great variety of viny species here.

One of them has the state flower of South Carolina on it.

(Jim) Yellow jessamine.

(Rudy) Yellow jessamine, I love that flower.

Very, very beautiful flower used in perfumes, but that is a poisonous plant, not to the touch, but you wouldn't want to nibble on that.

That's a species, now, that begins to dominate, coming out on plants that had fallen by the way.

(Jim) April's a great time to visit Bulls Island.

The flowers are in bloom.

There's toadflax.

(Rudy) Toadflax is a common one in open areas, isn't it?

It's along the road here, but it's farther off the road because now the canopy is gone.

Certain plants and animals gained a great deal from Hugo.

Others lost a great deal, but it's great in the spring to see that renewal.

♪ (Rudy) Jim, you remember when we visited Bulls Island right before Hurricane Hugo had hit, before we even knew it was coming.

This was a beautiful area with tall canopy, live oaks, palmettos, loblolly pines, shaded, so nice, so cool.

Then Hugo came, and our visit right after Hurricane Hugo, the same place was wide open.

Do you remember?

(Jim) Totally devastated, stripped bare, big oaks, and palmettos, pines.

(Rudy) Brown, very little green, sunlight coming in and very, very warm.

No canopy basically left at all, and then right now you see basically the same thing, except you've got green coming back.

(Jim) Wounds are healing very, very slowly.

(Rudy) Slowly but surely.

Big live oak there with the green coming on, still showing the effects of the storm, but you see lots of things coming up around, and I love that green.

Right over here, this little low area, see the little shell midden, basically, there.

Piles of shells left by Native Americans that were living on this island and feeding on a lot of the soft animals that were in those shells.

(Jim) Coming from New England, that's a good flower to see for me because it's one of my mother's favorites.

One of the bluets.

(Rudy) One of the bluets, but it's a bluet that's not blue in color; it's white.

Trailing bluet is one of the common names for it because the leaves are close to the ground, and it is trailing, but I like to call it innocence.

That's another common name, but four parts to the flower.

That's a typical way to identify that and other members of the bluet family.

Look right down here.

Skipper, one of the largest skippers in the United States.

Common name for that is the yucca skipper because the skipper lays eggs exclusively on yucca plants, which are scattered around on barrier islands and elsewhere.

That's a large one.

Look at the abdomen on that, really big, so that's a female, and I'm sure very soon she'll be laying eggs on the leaves of yucca down the way.

That's one you don't see often, so it's interesting to find it here.

I see a few plants coming in there that are typical of this area, and, again, new green on it.

Aralia spinosa is that one, the devil's walking stick.

(Jim) A good name.

That would cut your hand to grab ahold.

(Rudy) It protects that plant, keeps animals from stealing a lot of food and water from it.

Again, out here you're struggling to survive.

You want to protect yourself.

I see another one with stickers on it.

Prickly ash is the common name for that one.

Compound leaves and prickles on the leaves and on the stem.

Toothache tree is another name for that one.

It actually can deaden the pain of a toothache.

Buckthorn, there's another one.

Three little plants growing up here, not in the shade anymore, and yet they're still surviving in the open sunlight.

(Jim) Totally different look from what it was five and a half years ago.

(Rudy) Yeah, things are coming back.

Look right here in the shade.

Eastern cottonmouth, look at him.

(Jim) Wow!

That thick body.

(Rudy) Look at the head too.

(Jim) Yeah.

(Rudy) Broad head, flat sides on it -- I mean the top is flat -- and it drops right off on the sides.

It's hard to see the eye, but there's the eye with an elliptical pupil.

One of the pit vipers, the only poisonous snake you would expect to see out on Bulls Island.

(Jim) No rattlesnakes on the island, but there are cottonmouths as we evidence right here.

(Rudy) Oh, yeah.

Fairly common, they love a little extra water, especially close to those impoundments.

That snake doesn't seem to be bothered by us, but it knows we're here.

It's watching us carefully, and that pit's sensitive to temperature changes.

That lets him know we're here.

Look at the tongue flickering out.

That picks up odor particles.

That lets him know there's a human being in front of him, and notice he's not approaching us.

He won't have anything to do with anything too big to eat.

Oh, my goodness.

(Jim) Osprey!

(Rudy) Right here.

Osprey nest in one of those dead trees.

Canopy gone, leftover part of that tree there, and the osprey has built a nest.

Flying around, look at that.

(Jim) Definitely osprey nest?

(Rudy) Absolutely.

We see the bird flying toward the nest, and I love the way they play with the wind.

They can actually hover over the nest.

Wiggling the wings, dropping down on the nest.

This time of the year there should be eggs in that nest, usually two to four eggs for that bird.

(Jim) The fish hawk it's called.

(Rudy) Fish hawk is a good name.

Did you know that species is found on every continent except Antarctica?

The same species.

Hugo, when it came in, wiped out all of the osprey nests, but what happened the next year?

They were all rebuilt, and now they're nesting up there.

That is a spectacular bird.

Oh, wow, what a flyer.

(Jim) Remember a few days ago, the national symbol we saw close by, the eagle.

(Rudy) Bald eagles are on this refuge.

We found a nest just off the refuge site, and you remember the adults there.

White head, white tail on that thing.

Beautiful bird, wonderful bird coming in to feed the youngster, and then you remember we actually did get a chance to see the immature bird, much darker than the adults.

See that immature bald eagle flapping his wings or moving his wings.

He's basically fledged now.

He's left the nest, coming back every now and then, but really is able to go pretty much on his own.

(Jim) A good chance to compare the markings from the osprey to the eagle.

(Rudy) Yeah, both build a large nest.

Both have a lot of white on them, but the osprey is whiter than that bald eagle was.

That is a neat animal and, again, using this refuge.

If it wasn't for the refuge, areas like this, that animal would not survive.

♪ (Jim) Bulls Island became part of Cape Romain National Wildlife Refuge in 1936, and the Civilian Conservation Corps came in, built impoundments, some roads, and added to the dike system throughout the island.

(Rudy) The CCC did so much good work all over the United States, and these dikes and roads are wonderful because they give you a chance to see some of the variety of habitats here.

The dike that we're on separating the good, old salt marsh over here from freshwater marsh.

Look at the salt marsh grasses out there.

(Jim) Is that cord grass?

(Rudy) Cord grass from here to eternity, just lots and lots of it going off in the distance.

That little plant puts up with high salinity in the water.

Many other plants could not survive out there, but that one dominates.

(Jim) The dike separates it from over here, fresh water.

(Rudy) The dike separates it from good, old fresh water, and you can see the difference here very, very clearly, with different plants on one side as opposed to the other.

Remember when Hurricane Hugo came through?

Not far down from us, there was a breach in this dike, and you can imagine then that salt water intruded on the fresh water and vice versa.

Again, they have fixed that back.

They've reclaimed this dike, and it took a while, I'm sure, for that fresh water to really lose that salinity, but look at it today and what it attracts.

These freshwater impoundments are perfect places for birds.

(Jim) Animals are coming back, and that little island attracted the yellowlegs.

(Rudy) Yellowlegs all over the place.

I guess it gives them a feeling that they're out of danger and the water.

There are other shorebirds resting up there.

You see the way sometimes they're up and sometimes they flatten down even.

I see two neat birds.

Look at the black-necked stilts, a couple of them in the distance over there.

I always thought that's appropriately named with the black on the neck and those long, stilt-like legs.

(Jim) Like they're walking on stilts, you're right.

(Rudy) With that pointy beak getting invertebrates out of the water.

I see a couple of ducks too.

Look at the pair of blue-winged teal.

Isn't that nice?

(Jim) Bright blue piece on the shoulder wing.

(Rudy) That's right, and that little white, almost a crescent-moon look on the face of the male.

Male much more brightly marked than the female, of course, which is typical.

There's an old cormorant.

That's not very brightly marked.

Look at that dull-looking bird on the stick that's coming up out of that island out there.

(Jim) One of the diving birds.

(Rudy) Almost like a torpedo in the water, just drying out or sunning and warming up.

I see a little blue heron looking for a meal, it looks like.

Look at him moving, poised ready to grab something.

They recycle a lot of fish in these impoundments.

This is perfect for shorebirds, wading birds, and for ducks and lots and lots of others.

(Jim) Great diversity.

(Rudy) Look at the alligator.

Look at the alligator sneaking in.

Larger alligator than we looked at before sneaking in.

(Jim) For a meal.

(Rudy) Trying -- look how close he is to the black-necked stilts.

(Jim) Yeah.

(Rudy) The stilt is keeping an eye on him, and the alligator is keeping an eye on the stilt, and there must be enough distance because they're not grabbing each other.

(Jim) Looks close to me, though.

(Rudy) That's a predator-prey relationship kind of in the making.

It hasn't really happened yet, but I'm sure the alligator has that in his mind.

Oh, that's neat, and those two, again, share this impoundment and seem to survive very well together.

Look in front of us right here.

Look at the snake.

(Jim) A huge snake!

(Rudy) Wrinkled up in the road.

(Jim) What kind of snake?

(Rudy) Yellow rat snake.

All the rat snakes, when they're tense or nervous, wrinkle their bodies like that.

Do you see it?

I see stripes on it, so another name is the four-lined rat snake, also known as the live oak snake, great climber in live oaks on barrier islands.

(Jim) Frozen.

(Rudy) Non-poisonous.

(Jim) Almost frozen in place.

(Rudy) Yeah.

Oh, that's neat.

It's interesting that you think about and see things like that right now.

Remember that rookery not far from here that we took a look at?

This is the time of year when great egrets are building nests, and those beautiful white birds are building again.

Fairly flimsy nests up on trees that had been knocked down by the storm, taking advantage of nesting opportunities, trees that were knocked down in the water.

Weren't those beautiful birds?

(Jim) We need more refuges like Bulls Island to protect these habitats.

(Rudy) Yeah.

I love the one sitting down on the nest very carefully, and you can see all that breeding plumage on those egrets.

That almost did them in.

They were almost killed for those long breeding plumage feathers.

Thank goodness we've protected them.

[birds squawking] (Rudy) Then the black-crowned night herons, you remember them there?

(Jim) A hunched-shouldered looking bird, yeah.

(Rudy) Yeah, all humped, and they were probably nesting there too.

I remember the group of them, that couple of black-crowned night herons and all of those great egrets sitting perched in that tree.

This is a special place.

[birds squawking] [waves breaking] (Jim) Bulls Island is between five and six miles long, and this section, Rudy, on the north end maybe hasn't changed much in the sense of the trees, dead trees, around us.

(Rudy) The trees have been here a long time, but we walked out of a forest that was beaten to pieces by Hugo, and when you look back in here, you can see some of the damage, some of those trees standing up, live oaks that aren't alive anymore.

Totally rearranged by that storm.

The storm surge here was 21 feet, coming up 21 feet with waves on the top and leveling that forest, except for what?

(Jim) The palmettos.

(Rudy) The palmettos, yeah.

They're surviving.

They bend a little bit better.

Although you can see down the beach now, that erosion is slowly but surely wearing away the support for those trees, and eventually they topple down.

If anyone wanted to know what a storm can do to a barrier island, a hurricane, this is the perfect place to see it.

The scars still remain, and yet it's beginning to heal up, and still the Atlantic Ocean is coming in slowly but surely and rearranging the world, and that never changes.

It continues.

(Jim) I was going to say, 25, perhaps 30, feet a year off the north end of this island because of erosion.

(Rudy) That erosive force of the tides is amazing, and it's something that just continues year after year after year, day after day after day, and this is a great place to see it because you see skeletons of that old forest.

Areas like this are called boneyards, the skeletons of the trees, and if you want to see how powerful the forces at work here are, look at this live oak right in front of us that has been turned basically upside-down.

Those are the roots sticking out at the top where the branches are supposed to be, and, again, the Atlantic working today just like it was working back in September of 1989, but not with as much force.

(Jim) A ghost beach.

(Rudy) Yeah, a ghost beach, a ghost forest, really.

The major maritime forest here, live oak-palmetto forest, has been rearranged.

Look right up here too, talking about just neat things.

Look at the sand dollars.

(Jim) Oh, yes.

(Rudy) The skeleton of that animal, since we're talking about skeletons, test it is called.

Keyhole urchin is another name for it.

Waves come in slowly but surely, put sand on it and take sand away.

The animal's been dead for a good while, typical animal of these sandy beaches.

And just look down the way -- there are more and more and more.

(Jim) Look way down.

Two, three -- two or three deer -- a few deer out in the surf.

(Rudy) White-tailed deer coming out to play in the surf.

That's a pelican riding the water behind them, but white-tailed deer coming off the high ground, getting down close to the water.

Maybe getting a little sniff of that salty water and then heading back in.

In 1670, not so very far from this spot, the first settlers of South Carolina set foot on Carolina soil.

Some things they saw then, we still see today.

Things change, and yet in many ways they remain the same, and hurricanes certainly have affected this place, but nature bounces back.

I guess it's good to remind ourselves that nature isn't good, bad, right or wrong.

It's just the way the world is.

The system is a wonderful system.

What a special place.

It still is, even though the maritime forest is gone.

It's a great place to visit.

Thanks for coming with us to Bulls Island, just northeast of Charleston, South Carolina, and join us again on the next "NatureScene."

Program captioned by: CompuScripts Captioning, Inc. 803.988.8438 ♪ "NatureScene" is made possible in part by a grant from Santee Cooper, where protection and improvement of our environment are equal in importance to providing electric energy.

Additional funding is provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and by viewers like you, members of the ETV Endowment of South Carolina.