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A listener finds the larvae of the Dobsonfly along Cayce, South Carolina's Riverwalk.

Our next guest is a Charleston artist whose how-to-paint-and-draw book recently became a best-seller on Amazon.Mike Switzer interviews Robert Maniscalco in Charleston, SC.

When filming at Audubon’s Beidler Forest the Making It Grow team used binoculars to spy on a female Prothonotary warbler sitting on her eggs in a small hole in a cypress knee. Only the female incubates the eggs, which hatch after fourteen days. Then both parents are involved in feeding them, flying back and forth all day long bringing them insects.

Prothonotary warblers have strong site fidelity. Although they have a large nesting area in the US, individual birds return to the place of their birth.

To discover where prothonotary warblers spend their winters, Beidler staff devised an ingenious system. Several birds, weighing about half an ounce, have been fitted with tiny backpacks that record information about where they go. The devices don’t transmit coordinates, they would be too heavy. This system is dependent on having some of the birds, with their site fidelity, successfully making the trip south and returning to the place of their birth. Then they’re trapped, the backpacks removed, and information retrieved.

Professor Greg Reighard, Clemson researcher and international fruit specialist, explained that elderberries are primarily wind-pollinated. Although the flowers are extraordinarily showy, which you think would be a sign that they are attracting all sorts of pollinators, they don’t produce nectar so insect visitors are only collecting pollen. Still, their value to wildlife is high as the hundreds of dark purple fruits that each flower head produces are devoured by over 45 species of birds and racoons among others -- the Missouri Department of Conservation reports that a sharp-eyed naturalist even saw a box turtle eating fruits. But for people the entire plant contains compounds toxic to us, so this is one plant that grazers should not eat in the field. But properly prepared with heat, their berries have long been safely used for pies, wines and jellies.

Elderberry stems are semi-woody, the interior is filled with pith. The late John Fairey, renowned botany professor at Clemson, told students that this pith was used to pack delicate scientific instruments and still used by repairmen to hold tiny parts of jewelry and such. Mason bees and other insects, however, have long used the older hollow stems as places to construct egg-laying or brood chambers. So if you have elderberries in your yard, cut a few stems half way down every year to expose that pith-filled interior to cavity nesting bees. Another option is to put stems and other small branches or rotting wood in a mulch pile. Then you can order a Pollinator Friendly Habitat sign from the Xerces Society. Read their page about building a better mulch pile for more ideas about making your yard pollinator friendly.

Several years ago, our next guest’s company got its start by turning used cooking oil into biodiesel, first in the Midlands, then statewide. A few acquisitions later, they’re now doing it regionally and have expanded into other forms of organic recycling.Mike Switzer interviews Joe Renwick (BioJoe), founder and co-owner of Green Energy Biofuel in Winnsboro, SC.

The homebound segment of our population has certainly grown during the pandemic and that has resulted in more growth for companies that serve them.Mike Switzer interviews Charles McDonough, CEO of Interim Healthcare of the Upstate in Greenville, SC.

In case you didn’t know, our state has a program providing professional development and training for South Carolina-based film crews, production professionals, independent filmmakers, and students. It’s apparently the only one of its kind in the nation. And we just found out that two graduates of that program have recently had their short films accepted at the prestigious Tribeca Film Festival in New York City.Mike Switzer interviews Brad Jayne, a producer with Indie Grants, a collaboration of the SC Film Commission and Trident Technical College.