Rudy Mancke

During the winter months, inland residents of South Carolina may well see an increase in the number of ring-bill gulls on area rivers.s

Rudy shares a tip about a good book for fossil hunters on the Atlantic coast and the Gulf Coast.

Polygyra septemvolva is a species of air-breathing land snail, a terrestrial gastropod mollusk in the family Polygyridae.

Gentiana austromontana, the Appalachian gentian, is a 1–2 ft (30–61 cm) tall flowering plant in the Gentianaceae family. It is native to the southern Appalachians of West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee.

Loons (North America) or divers (United Kingdom / Ireland) are a group of aquatic birds found in many parts of North America and northern Eurasia. They can be found in South Carolina only during winter migration.

Bryozoa (also known as the Polyzoa, Ectoprocta or commonly as moss animals) are a phylum of aquatic invertebrate animals, nearly all forming sedentary colonies. Typically about 0.5 millimetres (1⁄64 inch) long, they are filter feeders that sieve food particles out of the water using a retractable lophophore, a "crown" of tentacles lined with cilia.

Trichonephila clavipes (formerly known as Nephila clavipes), commonly known as the golden silk orb-weaver, golden silk spider, or banana spider, is an orb-weaving spider species which inhabits forests and wooded areas ranging from the southern US to Argentina.

Rudy identifies NatureNotes theme music,
Tarrega's Estudio Brilliante, after an adaptation by Chet Atkins.

Carpenter ants (Camponotus spp.) are large (0.3 to 1.0 in or 0.76 to 2.54 cm) ants indigenous to many forested parts of the world.

They build nests inside wood consisting of galleries chewed out with their mandibles, preferably in dead, damp wood. However, unlike termites, they do not consume wood, discarding a material that resembles sawdust.

The yellow-bellied sapsucker (Sphyrapicus varius) is a medium-sized woodpecker that breeds in Canada and the northeastern United States.

The yellow-bellied sapsucker was described and illustrated using a hand-coloured plate by the English naturalist Mark Catesby in his The Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands which was published between 1729 and 1732.

Mole crickets are members of the insect family Gryllotalpidae, in the order Orthoptera (grasshoppers, locusts, and crickets). Mole crickets are cylindrical-bodied insects about 3–5 cm (1.2–2.0 in) long as adults, with small eyes and shovel-like fore limbs highly developed for burrowing.

Pyrrharctia isabella, the isabella tiger moth, banded woolly bear or just woollybear or woolly worm, occurs in the United States and southern Canada. It was first formally named by James Edward Smith in 1797.

The thirteen-segment larvae are usually covered with brown hair in their mid-regions and black hair in their anterior and posterior areas. In direct sunlight, the brown hair looks bright reddish brown.

Rudy shares some words for the new year from Henri-Frédéric Amiel.

The marbled salamander is a stocky, boldly banded salamander. The bands of females tend to be gray, while those of males are more white. Adults can grow to about 11 cm (4 in), small compared to other members of its genus. Like most of the mole salamanders, it is secretive, spending most of its life under logs or in burrows.

The southern house spider is a species of large spider in the family Filistatidae. Currently given the scientific name Kukulcania hibernalis, it was formerly known as Filistata hibernalis. Found in the Americas, it exhibits strong sexual dimorphism. It is occurs in the southern states of the USA, throughout Central America and some of the Caribbean, to southern Brazil and Uruguay. The males may be mistaken for brown recluses because the two have similar coloration and body structure.