natural resources

A smooth slide down a muddy bank, a trail of tracks, or a quick ripple beside a log may be the only sign that a river otter has passed through.

On a humid evening, a field or forest edge can begin blinking with tiny points of light. Fireflies are not flies at all. They are beetles, and their flashes are a form of communication.

During the colder months, one of the rarest large whales on Earth may be swimming beyond South Carolina's beaches. Some North Atlantic right whales travel more than a thousand miles from northern feeding grounds to the Southeast.

In a small mountain stream, a native brook trout may be only a few inches long. But that fish is living near the southern edge of a cold-water world.

A buck's antlers may look permanent, but they are part of a yearly cycle of growth, hardening, and release. After old antlers are shed in winter, new growth begins again.

Near sunset in late summer, look above an old school, church, or downtown building. You may see dozens or even hundreds of small birds circling a chimney in a tightening spiral.

A diamondback terrapin lives where fresh water and salt water meet. It is North America's only turtle found exclusively in estuaries, moving through tidal creeks, marsh edges, and muddy banks.

Each spring, striped bass begin moving upstream as water temperatures rise. Their spawning run depends on something easy to take for granted: enough flowing river.

In an open pine forest, a red-cockaded woodpecker may spend years working on a single cavity. Unlike other woodpeckers, it excavates its home in a living pine tree.

One of the biggest wildlife movements of the year can happen on a cold, wet night when most of us would rather stay indoors. Spotted salamanders spend much of their lives underground, hidden beneath forest soil and leaf litter.