♪ ♪ Hello, I'm Beryl Dakers, welcoming you to another edition of "NatureScene."

Today we're at the Catawba River near Great Falls.

Now, you may be wondering what we're doing in the middle of the river.

To find out, let's turn to our guide and teacher, Rudy Mancke, who is Natural History Curator of the South Carolina Museum Commission.

Rudy, why are we in the middle of a river on a show that talks about the approach of winter?

Well, Beryl, we're going to try to do two things today.

We're going to talk about how animals and plants kind of get ready for the cold weather, and we've got a good chilly day to do that.

We're feeling a little stress on our bodies, too.

We also want to take a look at what happens when a riverbed is exposed by moving the river, and see what kind of plants and animals can come to areas like this, and see, of course, how winter affects their lives.

It's a different place.

It's kind of a different experience today.

We're on a diversion dam in the Catawba River.

The Catawba River is, of course, this body of water behind us, and the dam in the back behind us is called Fishing Creek Dam, a hydroelectric power plant.

There are others down the river from us, but the Catawba River was diverted here, exposing riverbed in the early 1900s.

It's kind of a neat place because of what plants have come since the early 1900s and taken these spaces, and, again, how does winter affect those plants as it affects all of us?

It will be a good show.

(Beryl) You know, I've passed this site numerous times on the highways, but there's nothing like the feeling of actually being here, right within the body of what's happening.

(Rudy) It's a different experience.

It's an area that you've got to be careful on.

You cannot just come out on this diversion dam and run along, and this, that, and the other.

It's not something that's terribly safe.

We're being careful now, and we're not going to stand up here very long.

Why don't we go ahead and move on down and get down on the rocks and then begin to talk about the old riverbed for a little while.

I think that's a good idea.

Let's go.

Only one way to go.

(Rudy) We're going to have to work our way down here, Beryl.

Just be careful of these slippery leaves.

Now, here's something right here that we ought to take a look at.

You see it down there?

(Beryl) It's a fish skeleton.

(Rudy) It sure is.

Let's take a close look at that.

Get down to it.

Get these leaves back.

Do you know what kind of fish that is?

Look at that skull.

(Beryl) I'm not sure.

Is it a catfish?

(Rudy) You're exactly right, Beryl.

How did you know that?

That's a good guess.

The size of the skull will give you some idea of what kind of animal it is, but there's something else down there that pretty well proves it's a catfish.

(Beryl) Oh, yes.

(Rudy) See the spine right here, and you can see it's got little, rough edges on it that cause great problems when it jabs into somebody's skin.

This is a pretty good-sized catfish, and this is one of the spines on the front fins of the catfish.

There's one on each side fin and then one on the top, and I imagine if we keep looking down here, we'll probably be able to find more of the skeleton.

This is another piece of skull.

This is just the central part of the skull, and then these pieces fit on the sides here, and, of course, go down to the jaws of the catfish.

Bones are kind of neat.

You know, it's fun to play detective sometimes, figuring it out.

(Beryl) Putting them back together.

(Rudy) Yeah.

Now, here's something that we don't even have to put back together.

Look at the vertebral column.

We talk about vertebrates all the time.

Now, this is really why we call ourselves vertebrates.

Reptiles and amphibians and birds and mammals and fish are vertebrates because they have a vertebral column made out of either cartilage or, in this case, bone, and that's really, really neat.

Let me just take that apart, and you can see that -- (Beryl) You're looking at the single vertebra?

(Rudy) This would be -- let's just take that off.

Here's a single vertebra.

Kind of a side view and end-on view, and this has actually spines coming off the top and the bottom.

If you looked at a mammal vertebra, for instance, it would only have spines coming off of the top.

We don't have that arch down below there, and this is called the neural arch because the nerve cord goes through that hole.

This is called a haemal arch because blood vessels go through that hole.

(Beryl) Very much like ours.

(Rudy) Yeah, yeah, looks a lot like a human vertebra.

See the way the vertebra is sort of caved in on both ends?

That's another clue that it's a fish vertebra and not the vertebra of a small mammal or squirrel or something like that that you might expect it to be.

Kind of neat.

Bones are clues, and one of the fun things about nature is trying to figure out just from pieces of an animal what the animal is.

(Beryl) Why do you suppose our friendly catfish is over here?

(Rudy) Either somebody caught him and brought him up; or he could have gotten caught in one of these pools, or he could have gotten caught in one of these pools, and a raccoon or a river otter found an easy meal and brought him up here and dragged him out so that he would die and be a little bit easier to eat.

I see something else down here.

One of the large land snails.

This animal lives on the forest floor and feeds on decaying plant material, and this is what's going on this time of year.

(Beryl) He has a feast here with all these leaves.

(Rudy) He's got it made, and there are many of them, quite a few different varieties of snails here, and millipedes, and other things that are going to feed on this decaying plant material.

(Beryl) Is he a typical-sized snail?

(Rudy) For this variety of snail, yes, this is about average, one of the large forest snails.

Again, they're involved in recycling material, in taking dead stuff and miraculously, magically changing it into life again, and this leaf fall which we're experiencing now is an adaptation to colder weather.

That's one of the things that a lot of our trees do, and it most probably keeps them from losing extra amounts of water in the winter.

That's at least one idea of what function leaves falling off of trees in the winter is.

(Beryl) Nature is really marvelous.

(Rudy) It's all connected, too.

(Beryl) Rudy, what are these strange-looking spots on this bare vine over here?

(Rudy) Well, these are -- this is really a crazy story because those little things that look like little blobs of gooey material -- they're kind of sticky -- are bodies of one of the scale insects.

Now, it just so happens that the vine they're on is poison ivy, so I'm not going to really -- (Beryl) That's poison ivy?

(Rudy) Yeah.

I'm not really going to get too close to that right now.

(Beryl) Since it doesn't have the familiar leaves, how do we know that?

(Rudy) It's really awfully hard.

There is a little fruit sitting up here, and that tells you that it's poison ivy pretty quickly, but awfully hard once the leaves are gone.

Of course, you see poison ivy sheds its leaves like a lot of our flowering plants.

This is a female scale insect, most probably.

What happens is that the female lays eggs under her body, and then she dies, and her body acts as protection for the developing young through the winter.

So there's another adaptation.

Oh.

One way that insects make it through the winter is by laying eggs in protected places so that when they die, the eggs will go ahead and overwinter and hatch out next year.

Overwinter.

Let's see what else we can see.

Fascinating.

We haven't even gotten to the riverbed yet.

(Beryl) I need a hand here.

(Rudy) All right.

Let me grab this.

♪ (Beryl) There we go.

We'll say good-bye to our catfish.

♪ (Rudy) Let's get out on the rocks, themselves, now.

(Beryl) It's good to get in a clearing.

(Rudy) Oh, yeah.

It gets a little warmer out here, doesn't it?

This is nice.

Again, I don't get a chance to get on bottoms of rivers like this very often.

(Beryl) Me either, Rudy.

(Rudy) This is an interesting time of the year.

Take a look here, Beryl, because not only are leaves falling off of trees -- grab one of those.

(Beryl) Oh, my old friends here.

(Rudy) But also fruit is forming on trees and sometimes falling to the ground.

What do you have in your hand?

(Beryl) Sweet gum balls, which I hate.

(Rudy) You don't like sweet gum balls?

What's wrong with sweet gum balls?

(Beryl) They tend to stick to everything and stick you.

(Rudy) Yeah, well, they're interesting.

That's a common tree all over the state.

It does very well by waterways, as well as it does in upland areas.

What's the fruit that I've got that looks a lot like it but doesn't look so spiny, though?

(Beryl) I don't know.

It's from a sycamore tree, isn't it?

(Rudy) Sycamore, right.

This is another common tree, and you expect to find it especially well, especially commonly, along wet areas like this.

The leaf's kind of neat.

I don't know whether I can pull this off or not, but it usually comes off.

Yeah, you see what's under the leaf?

(Beryl) Oh, there's just a little bud.

(Rudy) The bud, and there's just no other plant that has that kind of relationship, and you see the leaf is very distinctly shaped and very large.

(Beryl) The leaf is protecting the bud.

(Rudy) Well, in a sense it is, right, and this time of year the leaf begins to fall off.

What causes leaf fall is that a very thick layer of cells builds up right at the connection point, the junction between the petiole, or the little stem of the leaf, and the branch.

When that layer begins to form, it seems to cut off the flow of fluids to the leaf, causing the leaf to die, and eventually, falling.

One of the reasons we refer to autumn as fall is -- (Beryl) Is because the leaves fall.

(Rudy) -- because of the leaves that are falling, and fruit is also forming and falling.

I bet we'll find a lot more fruit out here and some other things.

It might be worth looking -- yeah, see the little sycamore tree there coming up?

(Beryl) Just beginning.

(Rudy) Very small, and next to it, reddish in color, the good, old sweetgum.

Let's see what we can find further on.

(Rudy) These rocks are really interesting, aren't they, Beryl?

(Beryl) I can't believe how large they are, Rudy.

(Rudy) They've been smoothed off so well, too.

(Beryl) Where'd they come from?

(Rudy) Well, most of the rocks that are here were here and were pushed and shoved around by the Catawba River when it flowed this way.

Look at that.

(Beryl) That is magnificent.

(Rudy) You see, it's not attached.

It's not a part of the rock underneath.

This thing has actually been rolled around, pushed and shoved, by flowing water.

(Beryl) The same flowing water that you had me walk across to get here?

(Rudy) Well, yeah.

When the water's up real high, it can move objects like this without any problem.

There's a tremendous amount of force in moving water, and, of course, it does a lot of work for us.

In the hydroelectric dam it's producing electricity, probably, as we stand here talking, and when it flows over a boulder like this, it can actually roll it down the stream.

When you come to a place like this, it's kind of fun to try to remind yourself there's some clues about the past here.

I had a professor at Wofford that I have great respect for, John Harrington.

He always used to talk about the was-ness of the is.

Think about that a minute, the was-ness of the is.

Here's the way it is today.

What does that tell us about the way it was?

Ah, yes.

How do we know from how it is what it was in the past?

There are a lot of clues here.

I think we'll be able to search a little today and find them.

The rocks have changed a lot since they were under water.

All this green stuff, all these plants, were not here at all, of course, under water.

Why don't we walk around the back side again and head up on this way and take a look at one other area.

(Rudy) Why don't we head around this way and get close to a couple other of the rocks that are nice.

You've noticed all these lichens everywhere?

(Beryl) Uh-huh.

(Rudy) Boy, they've really come onto the rock.

They're responsible for breaking down some of this rock and eventually making soil out of it.

(Beryl) It must take them an awful long time to do that.

(Rudy) It does take them a long time, but the soil they produce with soil that blows in or is carried in by moving water, that's the way all these other green plants have gotten in here, and there's quite a bit of material.

This has been out from under water for a long time.

Just look.

Look at the mosses up there, Beryl.

(Beryl) Rudy, this sort of reminds me of Forty Acre Rock, with the mosses and lichens on rock outcrops.

(Rudy) As far as the plants are concerned, it's the same kind of place.

Only you and I know that there used to be the Catawba River here.

To the plants, it's open granite outcrops, just like Forty Acre Rock.

Many of the plants that are here are the same varieties that are at Forty Acre Rock.

You remember these mosses, again, these cushiony things, very primitive plants.

They do well here.

The lichens do well here.

Again, a combination of an algae and a fungus that live together well, so it's really a very, very exciting place.

A harsh environment, and so that does sort of limit what's here, and then, of course, different plants are down there by the wet areas.

(Beryl) It does seem strange, though, to have plants growing out of the cracks and on the rocks.

(Rudy) Well, that's kind of nice.

That's where the soil builds up, though, and that's exactly why these plants only do well in those kinds of situations.

Broomsedge and Lespedeza .

Look at this.

(Beryl) Another one, yes.

(Rudy) Can you just not feel in your mind's eye the water rushing by that and scooping out a little area underneath?

Probably, again, weaker parts of the rock are gone.

(Beryl) It does give you a new appreciation of the force of water and rivers, themselves.

(Rudy) Yeah.

It's really smoothed this whole area off.

If we were up North, you would almost say, "Gee, a glacier's been here."

Well, that's water, too, really.

Water in the form of ice or as a liquid really can make a difference.

Let's take a look over here.

See the way it's -- let me just walk over and get in it.

Look at this.

See, it's scooped out under here.

Nice and smooth.

It looks like people had spent a long time doing it.

(Beryl) It's a shelter.

(Rudy) That's the work of water.

Probably not just the water, itself, but pebbles, rocks, things that are being forced along by the water and abrading it.

That's one example of what's called mechanical weathering.

(Beryl) Mechanical weathering.

(Rudy) The lichens are breaking down rock by producing chemicals that break it down.

That's chemical weathering.

Right underneath it here is mechanical weathering.

The world is not the same.

These stones are not always going to be here.

(Beryl) It's changing right before us, and we don't even realize it most of the time.

(Rudy) No, we usually don't.

Let's check out this pool for a minute and see if we can find some animals in there.

♪ (Rudy) Every puddle on these rocks is a world in itself, and one of the things that's fun to do is to come to one of these places and just see what's living in that world, and I think without too much trouble -- (Beryl) I don't know about -- oh.

(Rudy) See the snail?

(Beryl) I see lots of them.

(Rudy) They're common here, feeding on algae that's growing here and decaying material.

You can even look at -- see the leaf?

It's a cottonwood leaf.

Let me get out my magnifier and see if we can take a close look at this.

Maybe you've never seen snail eggs before, but you see that little glistening?

(Beryl) It's a jelly mass with eggs in it.

(Rudy) Jelly mass, and if you magnify it a little bit, you can actually see whitish material with a little yellow dot, and those are going to be developing snails.

Can you see that?

(Beryl) Oh, that's spectacular.

(Rudy) Isn't that neat?

Little yellow dot, and they lay them in masses.

Of course, these snails are hermaphroditic.

They have both male and female reproductive organs in one body, and they get together to swap sperm and then produce these masses of fertilized eggs.

Let me put that back down in there so we won't lose it.

(Beryl) Rudy, look at that.

(Rudy) Look at that thing.

(Beryl) It looks like a -- well, it's a shell, isn't it?

(Rudy) It's a shed skin, believe it or not, of a crayfish.

It's one of the arthropods, joint-legged animals, and these animals, in order to get larger, have to shed their skin because their skin, or their skeleton rather, is on the outside.

It's called, remember, an exoskeleton.

We have an endoskeleton.

As a matter of fact, we saw an endoskeleton a minute ago.

(Beryl) An endoskeleton of the catfish.

(Rudy) This is an exoskeleton, and it sheds this periodically.

You see the way the top of the shell just sort of pops up like that?

Then he pulls his body out and leaves that on the bottom.

Of course, bacteria will feed on that and break it down.

One other thing at the pool, the crayfish need oxygen in the water to survive, so do the fish that are in there.

Where does the oxygen come from?

(Beryl) The algae.

(Rudy) The algae, and look over there at the base of that rock.

Can you see the algae growing?

Do you see those little bubbles under there?

(Beryl) Yeah.

Most people call them air bubbles.

(Rudy) Most people would think those are air bubbles, but if you were to analyze them, you would find they're almost exclusively one gas, the gas that we need to survive.

(Beryl) Oxygen?

(Rudy) Oxygen.

And without those green plants in the water and the green plants around us here in the air, we would not be here.

Animals are dependent upon plants not only for food, because we can't make our own food, we have to take it from plants -- (Beryl) But for the oxygen, as well.

(Rudy) But also for oxygen, and, again, everything seems to be so well balanced in nature.

(Beryl) How do these animals get here?

(Rudy) Well, that's a good question.

There are really a number of ways.

Whenever the dam that we walked across kind of floods, and water comes over, it does carry some of them down here and leave them.

That's one way they get here.

The dragonfly nymphs that are in here somewhere, probably, are here because dragonflies flew in and laid eggs inside the water here.

(Beryl) The snails.

(Rudy) The snails often get here because a little mass of their eggs, like we've already seen, might get attached to the leg of one of the wading birds, like a heron, or an egret, or one of the ducks.

They fly here to fish, put their legs in the water, that slides off, and now we've got a new community.

It's kind of haphazard in a way.

That's why each one of these pools is a little different, because of this haphazardness.

That's why it's so much fun to come to places like this and look.

They are adventures, remember we've said this, close at hand that we all miss, and that's too bad.

Let's look at one other thing further on.

(Beryl) Okay.

(Rudy) A lot of trees are beginning to show themselves here, Beryl, a willow there and a little elm.

(Beryl) You know what else, Rudy, I noticed a lot of the composite flowers, like the asters.

(Rudy) This is the time of year for them, and look at them.

They're all over the place, the fall asters.

What kind of tree is that?

Do you know that one?

Now, look at the fruit.

All the leaves have gone.

I will give you a clue: They're compound leaves, the tree always lives in wet places, and you make baseball bats out of the wood.

Does that help you any?

(Beryl) Uh-huh.

(Rudy) What do you think it is?

(Beryl) I think it's called an ash tree.

(Rudy) I think you're right, an ash tree.

Quite a few varieties in the state, but look at the fruit.

Let's take a look at that fruit, if we can.

Let's put this net down for a minute.

Let me just grab a handful.

(Rudy) Look at these.

Interestingly-shaped seed.

See, the seed is up here in this upper end, and then there's a little wing off of it, and what that wing allows for the seed to do is, instead of the seed simply falling down below the tree, it allows it to be blown by the wind a good distance.

Of course, also, water moves it along here.

Have you ever thrown these up in the air and watched them spin?

(Beryl) No, no.

(Rudy) It's almost like helicopters.

Let me just see.

See them begin to spin around, spin around, and a good breeze will cause those things to spin and float in the air, a fairly good distance, at least not dropping all the seed -- (Beryl) In one spot.

(Rudy) -- in one spot.

Seed dispersal is very important, and it's going on this time of year.

Of course, the tree is going to make it through the year.

It isn't going to die or anything like that, like many of the insects, but it's good to scatter those seed, and it is loaded, as you can see.

(Beryl) Oh, Rudy, look up there.

(Rudy) There's one of the large birds, wading birds, that comes to these pools often to fish, a great blue heron.

Look at the way he flies with his neck tucked back.

See the big wings.

One of the largest water birds that we have throughout South Carolina, and, again, comes to places like this to fish.

They eat frogs and crayfish and other things, too.

(Beryl) Just a beautiful animal, circling.

(Rudy) Oh, a magnificent flier, and you don't think of him as an animal that hovers much.

You see, he keeps working his wings.

He's kind of having trouble staying up there.

He doesn't glide much like the vultures or the hawks but still a beautiful animal.

(Rudy) It's a magnificent animal, isn't it?

There's so many things that are interesting in a place like this.

(Beryl) And you'd never think it.

(Rudy) Oh, my goodness, look at this.

Look at that.

(Beryl) It looks like somebody's had a clam feast.

(Rudy) Yeah.

Let me put this net down.

I want to go over and get this, too.

Why don't you just take a seat by those clams for a second.

Let me just talk a minute about those things.

Let me get one other thing that I want to see if you can figure it out here.

This is another one of those stories that's kind of nice.

Why don't I get one of these shells first.

Now, do you remember when we did a show a while back on aliens, non-native plants and animals.

(Beryl) Asiatic clams.

(Rudy) There you go.

We talked about Asiatic clams.

We said that these clams are not native to South Carolina, not native to the United States.

They're from Malaysia.

Asiatic clams pretty well tell us that.

They were introduced into the Pacific region of North America a while back.

Now they're in all the rivers in the Atlantic region.

These reproduce so rapidly that they sometimes actually fill intake areas on hydroelectric plants like the one up the river from us here a little bit.

So these have really become a problem.

Again, a non-native animal that's been brought in and released and -- (Beryl) Taken out of its native habitat without the controls.

(Rudy) -- yeah, there are no natural controls.

One of the things that animals that live in our area have come up with, as far as natural controls, is how to get over the winter, and that's one of those things that these animals can do fairly well.

They seem to survive because they're under water in mud on the bottom or sand on the bottom, but a lot of the other animals that we bring over simply can't cope and die.

Those that do survive, though, seem to almost take over.

Asiatic clams.

Now, what is that?

Look how pretty that is.

(Beryl) I don't know.

It looks like oats.

(Rudy) Well, it does.

It looks a lot like sea oats, too, doesn't it?

Now, sea oats are only found along the sand dunes on the beaches.

It's protected.

It's a federally protected plant, so this cannot be sea oats.

This is a very close relative.

Same genus, different species.

And it's called -- (Beryl) River oats.

(Rudy) River oats is the name for it.

(Beryl) Are you serious?

(Rudy) Yes, I'm serious.

Upland sea oats is another name.

These are found along all of our river systems in South Carolina and do very well.

Of course, this time of the year a lot of people are looking for this for dried arrangements, and it is very, very nice, one of the grasses.

Again, grasses are good at taking energy from the sun and making food out of it, and we've been taking advantage of the grasses, especially the wheat and oats and those varieties, for a long, long period of time.

This is nice.

(Beryl) River oats, I'll have to remember that.

(Rudy) Hold on just a minute.

I think I just saw a butterfly.

(Beryl) Well, go get your net.

(Rudy) I've been carrying it all day.

I haven't seen much at all.

Let's see if I can just get close to it.

I got him, and now this is one that we haven't seen before.

(Beryl) That's unbelievable -- (Rudy) If you'll hold this net -- (Beryl) -- having seen so many.

(Rudy) -- I'll reach in and try to get ahold of him.

This is one that I think you'll find most interesting.

He probably won't sit on my finger, but do you see those two little projections off the front?

(Beryl) Oh, yes.

(Rudy) The common name for this butterfly is the snout butterfly.

(Beryl) I see why.

(Rudy) Those little pouts on the front there.

It looks almost like a long nose, not really that, but this one is -- the species name is bachmanii .

It's named after one of the early South Carolina naturalists, Dr. Bachman, or Reverend Bachman, lived down in Charleston, helped John Audubon quite a bit on his mammals of North America.

Of course, a warbler in our state called Bachman's Warbler, an endangered species, is also named after him.

Let's just see, I doubt if he'll hold on.

(Beryl) Not at all.

(Rudy) No, he was gone.

That's the first time I've seen one in this county, but they're found generally all over the state, Oh, okay.

Snout butterfly.

One other thing I want to show you.

(Beryl) All righty.

(Rudy) Some potholes, believe it or not.

(Beryl) Potholes.

(Rudy) Let's walk off this way.

Here now is what we call potholes, Beryl.

There are a number of them.

This one is the one that's closest.

What do you think forms those?

Let me take my coat off while I talk, because I want to show you something.

(Beryl) Well, I know that they're formed by rocks.

(Rudy) Okay.

What happens is, is that the fast-moving river is coming along in here; there's an area of the rock that's soft, and little pebbles get caught in it and swirled around; and as the hole gets a little deeper, more pebbles come in, more swirling; and if you stick your hand down here in the bottom, you ought to be able to come up with a handful -- and look at that one -- of perfectly ground -- feel that -- pebbles.

It's really smooth as glass.

(Beryl) Very smooth.

(Rudy) And, of course, the pebble gets smoothed down as it wears away against the rock, and the water doesn't come through here like it used to, but this is, again, the was-ness of the is.

You can tell that it used to because the potholes are here, and, of course, those pebbles are also found there.

This has been a good day.

(Beryl) It certainly has.

We've seen an awful lot of stuff.

(Rudy) Well, it's been exciting.

I think one of the things that makes it exciting is that we are in a unique place.

This old riverbed is nice, and it's a great adventure close to home in South Carolina.

We encourage people who watch us not just to watch but to have these experiences for themselves because it makes their life so much more exciting.

Truly.

Today I think we've really gained an appreciation of rivers and water and just nature in general.

Yeah, I notice even as the sun is setting, and we're in the shade now, I have a greater appreciation for the sun because the temperature difference already is unbelievable.

The stresses are upon us.

Okay.

We hope the stresses aren't upon you and that you will take the time out to look around and see what nature has in store.

In the meantime, join us again in two weeks for another "NatureScene."

Program captioned by: CompuScripts Captioning, Inc. 803.988.8438 ♪