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NatureNotes
Mon-Fri, throughout the day

Naturalist Rudy Mancke, the late host of SCETV's long-running NatureScene, shared his knowledge of plants and wildlife for nearly 25 years on NatureNotes. These 1-minute snippets offer you a chance to find out about diverse topics having to do with the natural world. From the inner workings of our world's ecosystems to plants & animals unique to South Carolina, you'll learn more about the world around you on NatureNotes.

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  • 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.
  • The American woodcock (Scolopax minor), sometimes colloquially referred to as the timberdoodle, the bogsucker, the hokumpoke, and the Labrador twister, is a small shorebird species found primarily in the eastern half of North America. Woodcocks spend most of their time on the ground in brushy, young-forest habitats, where the birds' brown, black, and gray plumage provides excellent camouflage.
  • This is the time of year when birds, in search of seed, seek out winter fruit.
  • Even this time of year, you might hear spring peepers, chorus frogs, or wood frogs, depending where you are in South Carolina.
  • The bowfin (Amia calva) is a bony fish, native to North America. Common names include mudfish, mud pike, dogfish, grindle, grinnel, swamp trout, and choupique. It is regarded as a relict, being the sole surviving species of the Halecomorphi, a group of fish that first appeared during the Early Triassic, around 250 million years ago.
  • The evening grosbeak (Hesperiphona vespertina) is a passerine bird in the finch family Fringillidae found in North America.
  • Fagus grandifolia, the American beech or North American beech, is a species of beech tree native to the eastern United States and extreme southeast of Canada.
  • Rudy shares Alfred Lord Tennyson's "Flower in the crannied wall..."
  • The turkey vulture (Cathartes aura) is the most widespread of the New World vultures. One of three species in the genus Cathartes of the family Cathartidae, the turkey vulture ranges from southern Canada to the southernmost tip of South America. It inhabits a variety of open and semi-open areas, including subtropical forests, shrublands, pastures, and deserts.