>> [Guitar plays] >> [Laughs] So this is a little American alligator, it's not a crocodile.

Okay, here we go.

Here's a couple more.

In fact, one of them just flew.

I want to show you guys something really neat that we just caught.

And this is... an Eastern mole.

And these are one of the coolest animals that you will ever see.

And they do bite, so I'm being a little bit careful of the teeth.

But this is an animal that just is so adapted for what it does.

Big, powerful front feet for digging.

Not much in terms of eyes.

They don't see real well, but they make up for it with their sense of smell.

And that allows them to find earthworms and mole crickets and beetle larvae and all sorts of things like that.

This guy has really powerful shoulders, and I can feel his muscles bulging underneath my hand.

You know, there's a pretty good chance that you have moles like this in your very own yard.

If you take the time to look, you might be amazed at the diversity of life around you.

Let's look at some typical LowCountry yards and see what we can find.

So, we're actually headed to the backyard to see what animals we could find, but right here on the front walk is a rosy wolf snail.

And this is a neat snail.

This is one of those animals that's actually fairly common, but you don't often see it.

Now, rosy wolf snails are cannibals.

They eat other snails.

And they're capable of running down other snails because they're much, much faster.

So, what they do is crawl around using those tentacles to pick up the scent trail or slime trail of other snails.

And once they do, they lock on to it and they follow it till they can run them down and eat them.

This guy -- You know, "fast" is relative because no snail is fast, but as I said, this is one of the fastest of all.

Now, generally they eat snails that are smaller than themselves.

Sometimes they eat other rosy wolf snails.

So all these snails and slugs -- and slugs are very much like snails, they just don't have that shell -- tend to leave a slime trail.

And that's visible with the naked eye, but boy, if you're a snail or other things that eat snails, you can pick up on that with your sense of smell or something like that, and that's how they find them.

Neat animal, but let's see what's in the backyard.

So, we have a great naturalist backyard, and it attracts a lot of interesting animals, but not all of them are big, showy things.

So one of the things I like to do is look underneath these lights.

These are on part of the time at night, and they have a tendency to attract insects.

And some of those insects will congregate underneath the lights.

And here's a good one.

This is -- see if I can work him out of here carefully.

Here is one called an ox beetle.

And ox beetles are one of the really showy scarab beetles that we have around here.

And this one has what looks like triceratops horns sticking out.

And this is a completely harmless insect, but they look like they can hurt you with these spines.

In fact, when you hold them, this guy's poking me, not only with these horns, but also with the tarsi, the little foot pieces, and those things can pinch you pretty good and poke you pretty well.

But ox beetles, males, like this one -- females don't have these horns -- will use their horns to combat with other males.

And this is probably how they handle territorial disputes and disputes over females.

Now, beetles like this don't really feed much.

They may feed on fruits, and they may take pollen off flowers and things.

But their main function as adults is to fly and mate.

This is a neat insect, but let's see what else we can find.

I've been watching this animal for a couple of weeks now.

And it showed up right here in our backyard.

And this is one of the golden silk spiders.

And this is a big female.

This is an impressive spider.

One thing I just noticed is, it has decreased in size significantly.

The abdomen is much smaller, so I think what happened is, I think she laid an egg case somewhere.

If you look really closely, you can see a little male.

So the males are much smaller, and they will hang out in the web, but a lot of times they'll stay clear of the female because there's always the chance that she might eat one of the males.

The other thing is, there's some other spiders, some smaller species, that will use these webs and live in a web that was built by a different species.

This has a six-foot web.

And so it's one of the orb weavers.

And they make terrific webs.

And, of course, this web is designed for catching insects that they eat.

Now, they mostly eat insects -- grasshoppers, dragonflies, even some of the bigger flying insects -- but occasionally they're capable of eating even a small green anole or a little tree frog or something like that.

Now, these don't pose any danger to people at all.

In fact, they're great natural pest control.

I love having this in my backyard because it controls insects and it just does some very important things for us.

Plus, it's a beautiful animal.

Now, people used to call these banana spiders, and they said they were introduced to the LowCountry.

The reality is, this is a native species, and they're common.

Some years you see tons of them.

Next year maybe not quite so many.

But they've been here for a long time, and again, one of our native species.

Hey, guys, if you look right here, it's one of the LowCountry's most beautiful butterflies.

This is called a giant swallowtail.

And this is one of our biggest butterflies.

In fact, there he goes.

That is... a beautiful animal.

But I noticed it's on a toothache tree, and that's the larval food plant.

So we have several toothache trees in our yard, and one of the reasons we put them here is it's a great wildlife plant.

And the larvae of the giant swallowtail caterpillar feeds on toothache trees.

So I'll tell you what, if we look around, I'll bet you anything, we usually find a whole bunch of larvae.

Here we go.

This is what I'm looking for right here.

And I'll tell you what, this is so cryptic.

It is so well camouflaged.

It looks like bird droppings, and that's what giant swallowtail larvae look like, especially when they're little like this, is they look just like the droppings of a bird.

And this protects them from all kinds of predators, all sorts of things that might normally eat them.

Birds and other insects and probably even lizards and amphibians and things like that.

So this animal didn't come from our backyard, but it did come from somebody's backyard very near here.

This is one of the neatest animals that you will ever see in the LowCountry.

It's called a hickory horn devil.

And although it looks really, really dangerous, it's completely harmless.

The hickory horn devil is the larvae, or the caterpillar, of a great big moth called a royal walnut moth.

And as pretty as the moth is, I think that the caterpillar is even more spectacular.

So this guy was down moving around on the ground when they caught him, so I'm sure he's getting ready to pupate.

I mean, it's big enough.

In fact, this is the biggest one I've ever seen.

It's been feeding on cherry or ash or hickory, as the name would imply, and it's gotten big and fat on leaves.

And so this animal will crawl underground, form a pupa, a case -- a black one, about that long -- and it will stay in the soil and then emerge.

Actually, it will stay in the soil through the winter and it will emerge in the spring as a beautiful moth.

I'm kind of hoping this one will spend the winter in this garden, so we're going to let him go right here, and I'm sure he'll find a good place to go.

I was hoping we would see a little snake.

And this is, of course, a nonvenomous snake.

It's called a garter snake, and you can see he's snapping a little bit.

And garter snakes are not venomous.

They can bite, and they have fairly sharp teeth.

Now, this is a little male.

A female would be much, much bigger than this.

At least twice the size of this.

And I can tell it's a male.

If I look at the tail, it's a very thick tail after the vent right there.

Now, garter snakes eat toads and frogs, and even sometimes earthworms and slugs and things like that.

And they're really common.

In fact, I see lots of them in this yard.

Garter snakes have great stripes down their bodies.

This one is not real bright.

Some of them are beautiful with sort of even a little bit of blue in them and greens and real vivid stripes running down them.

You know, it's a real treat to have this much diversity of life in my own backyard.

So we're in our director Rob's neighborhood, and actually he found these things -- these neat-looking mounds -- right out in the center of the street here.

And these things are really characteristic of an animal called a cicada killer.

And they are absolutely fabulous.

And I'm sure there's one inside this big mound of dirt here.

And obviously some serious excavation is taking place.

This animal has -- Oh, here's one with a cicada!

Just took it down right there.

Oh!

Here, this has got one, too!

Oh!

Can you believe that?

Guys, while we were filming, we just had two cicada killers fly by with cicadas.

They came roaring in and dropped down.

They had them in the burrow just like that.

We didn't get a good look at them, but this is an animal -- one of the most grisly life cycles of any animal I can think of.

So, it catches a cicada -- great big cicada, much bigger than itself.

It stings it, it paralyzes it, and then it flies over, and either carries it across the ground or flies as best it can with something so heavy.

Sometimes they even crawl up tall trees so that they can kind of get an angle, and as they lose altitude, they get closer to the burrow.

Then they take it down inside and they sting it, paralyze it, lay eggs on it, and then when their larvae hatch, they actually feed on the still-alive cicada.

And then eventually, obviously, they eat too much of the cicada and kill it.

And then the larvae pupate underground and emerge as adult cicada killers.

Unbelievable life history.

A single cicada killer may catch many, many cicadas to go in one burrow, and these burrows often branch and there will be several eggs within each burrow.

There he is.

He's just starting to come out.

Oh, that was really cool.

So, you don't want to get too close to these things.

Even though the sting is not horrible, it is very, very painful and wouldn't be much fun for sure.

I don't think there's one in here.

I didn't see one go in here recently.

But I want to give you guys an idea of just how deep these burrows are.

These things can be a couple feet deep or more.

And you can see.

I'm not going any further because I don't want to ruin the burrow, but, I mean, it's deeper than that.

So, they're down there pretty far.

You can see all this dirt came from a hole about that big around, so... Got him!

So... what a neat creature.

These things have just a beautiful pattern to them.

A very bold, bold pattern.

And a lot of times, these stinging insects -- wasps and bees -- have those bright colors, and that's a warning for things to leave them alone.

Now, this is a big wasp.

These things can be 2 inches long, and this one's not quite that big.

And they will patrol their territories, and if anything gets close to their burrow, they'll run it off.

In fact, just a second ago, a butterfly flew by, and one of these big females just blasted after it and chased it out of the area.

Now, males are much smaller, and males don't sting.

And that's typical of wasps.

The females sting and the males don't.

I'm going to let this guy go, but I'm going to be a little wary, because I imagine he's not too happy about being in the net.

One of the great things about birds is, all you've got to do is look out the window to see a variety of species.

Now, we have with us today Dr. Chris Marsh, and Chris is the director of the LowCountry Institute on Spring Island.

He's a great ornithologist and he's going to tell us a little about what we can do to attract birds to our yard.

Welcome, Chris.

>> Thanks, Tony.

Well, right off the bat, remember that birds need food, they need cover, but they especially need water.

And right here we have a great water feature that has all the characteristics that a good water feature needs.

First of all, it has the sound of running water.

It has shallow areas where the birds can get in and bathe.

And it also has some places where the birds can perch so that they can check things out before they come through the area.

Even this little wax myrtle is a good perching place for the birds before they drop down into the water feature.

Of course, you can do it in a much simpler way.

A simple birdbath works as well.

>> So we've got everything we need for the birds.

I think what we need to do is back away from these feeders and see what we can get to come in.

>> Sounds good.

>> Okay, so we've given the birds a little more space.

And hopefully some will fly in here in a minute, but what do we mean by cover?

When you say "cover," tell me specifically what you're talking about.

>> Tony, what we're talking about is that every yard needs a safe place for the birds to go, somewhere where they can hide and be safe from hawks, cats, et cetera.

For example, in this particular yard -- this is a wild one -- but it has a section there where the shrubs are still allowed to grow high.

Matter of fact, with their feeders, you can see there's quite a few different types.

>> Yeah, and I know the type of food that you offer the birds sometimes attracts different species, right?

>> Definitely.

And when you're setting up feeders, you like to have more than one type of food.

It's just like a restaurant.

>> Well, you want to see more than one type of bird.

>> Exactly.

>> And more than just a few birds.

>> And so there's a lot of different bird feeders out there and a lot of different types of seed, but in the case of the seed feeders, sometimes the simplest way to do it is to have more than one feeder.

Put sunflower in one.

Black oil seed, it's sometimes called.

And I suggest millet for the other one.

Of course, the other thing that they like is some like a platform feeder.

And you can get special mixtures, so it depends upon how involved you want to be.

>> You can look at a bird bill and tell a lot about what it eats, right?

>> That's correct.

As a matter of fact, most of the birds that come to the feeders that have seed will often have a conical or triangular shaped bill, because they use that fat base of the bill to crack open the seed.

But if you watch carefully, they'll toss the husk away and just swallow the kernel inside.

>> Like a cardinal, for instance.

>> A cardinal.

And the sparrows as well.

But some birds, like the titmouse or the nuthatch, will grab a sunflower seed and peck it open, so there's more than one way to do that.

>> I noticed a lot of other stuff comes to your bird feeder.

>> People love getting birds in their backyard because they love nature, but they also get other types of wildlife.

Now, people have a love/hate relationship with squirrels.

For most people, they're getting the gray squirrel, and they sometimes see that as a nuisance because it's eating their birdseed.

People often put in baffles or have other contraptions to try to keep the squirrels off.

>> Or even mechanisms that sling the squirrel off if he touches it.

>> Which is one of my favorites.

>> Yeah, not everybody loves having squirrels in their backyard.

>> That's right.

As a matter of fact, if you look at the feeder right now, there's some birds on that platform side on the right.

These are chipping sparrows.

They've got the rusty cap with a very small bill, but it's still conical, showing that it's a seed eater.

>> Sparrows are difficult.

That's one of the toughest groups for sure.

>> That is, and that's the ones, though, that if you watch them closely, they have great colors, but you've got to be really close to see it.

Of course, most people prefer cardinals and other more brightly colored birds.

>> Yeah, I tend to like the bright-colored birds.

>> That's when you know you have a bird nerd -- that's somebody who loves sparrows like I do.

I see we also have a chickadee on the feeder.

Chickadees are great because they feed in all different ways.

This one loves going for sunflower seed, but they'll also go to suet, and, of course, they love the water.

>> I notice they'll fly in, grab something, then fly back to the tree, so fly back into that cover that's so important.

>> Exactly, and then in that tree, they'll peck open that seed.

They should also be nesting here any time soon.

So having a birdhouse nearby would also help as far as attracting birds, particularly the chickadees.

There's a titmouse that's just arrived, and look, there's a white-breasted nuthatch on the left side of the feeder grabbing some seed right there.

One of the things about nuthatches is, nuthatches and woodpeckers excavate a cavity in dead wood.

So they need either a dead branch or a dead tree somewhere.

>> Yeah, I've seen them peeling bark back and trying to catch insects and things under the bark.

>> They're usually an insect eater, but they love seed as well.

>> They're a fine-looking little bird.

>> They are.

It's the only bird that goes head-first down the tree, so it's a great one to watch.

I see a male American goldfinch has shown up.

They have just molted so that they're coming out of their winter plumage to their summer plumage.

>> That's one of those that I can identify because it has that blast of yellow on it.

>> It's that kind of colorful bird that really gets people started in bird watching.

>> So, what would you want to use in a feeder for a goldfinch?

>> They like a variety of seed, and actually this one -- even though people think of thistle, this one's going for black oil sunflower, as well.

By having the variety of seed out there increases your chances of the different kinds of birds being attracted to the feeder.

>> Boy, stuff's starting to pick up here, isn't it?

>> Yeah.

As a matter of fact, the fact that you have trees in the backyard will attract woodpeckers.

And I see there's a little male downy woodpecker that's on the pine tree over there.

Notice it's got a little red cap on the back of the head.

That lets you know it's a male.

Suet's another great way to attract those woodpeckers, if you put a suet cake out.

>> And so are they eating the suet or the insects that are attracted to it?

>> They're actually eating the suet.

It's very high fat, high energy, and they love it.

One of the things about suet feeders, though, is, that's a good winter, cold weather type feeder to have.

In the summer, they get a little soft.

So put it out in the winter, but don't worry about it in the summer.

>> So, what can we do to attract nesting birds?

>> During nesting season, it's really important to provide either cover for some birds, such as the cardinals, the towhees, Carolina wrens.

They need those thick areas that provide cover during the rest of the year as well.

But then there are birds that would nest normally in nature out in old cavities.

And those are the birds that we put up birdhouses for.

>> Right.

Bluebird boxes.

>> For example, bluebirds and chickadees.

They like it as well.

The kinds of birds you attract to birdhouses depends upon the size of the box and the size of the opening.

>> I remember that.

>> That's right, so that's a great way to bring in birds where you can really get to know them well and personally by watching them go through their life cycle in terms of how they reproduce and watching the babies come out.

>> So, Chris, we've seen some cool stuff, but what other sorts of things would you expect to see at a feeder like this?

>> In most cases, what you expect to get are, of course, the cardinal, blue jay, titmice, chickadees, the nuthatches, different kinds of woodpeckers.

Red-bellied woodpecker's a common one that people see as well.

But in some places, there are some special birds that you might get.

And in Beaufort County, one of those is the painted bunting.

It's a spectacular bird.

The males are the ones that everybody notices because of all the colors.

>> They are beautiful.

>> And they migrate from here down to Cuba and south Florida.

The females, though, are the ones that are sort of greenish, and they sometimes are overlooked.

>> That's often true in birds, isn't it?

The males are much more brightly colored than the females.

>> As a rule, they are.

There's a few exceptions, but that's the basic rule.

But if you're going to be sitting on a nest, you don't want to be advertising yourself with all those bright colors.

>> You want to blend in.

So if you're really, really interested in learning the birds, what is the best way to go about it?

>> Well, one of the first things to do is to get yourself a bird book, a bird identification book, and just start looking at the pictures.

Get one for this particular area.

That makes it easier.

Certain types of birds are found just in the southeast.

Also there are websites.

So just start looking at the images, and most of all, spend a lot of time just watching the birds because they're great as far as their behavior, and you never know what new kinds of birds are going to show up.

>> Chris, thank you so much for showing us some of the beautiful birds that live in our own backyard.

>> It's great being here.

This is a spectacular backyard for birds, but we want to remind everybody that every backyard can be great for birds if you do what you need to to attract them there.

>> Some of the neatest wildlife in your yard comes out at night.

In fact, we're here on Rob's porch, and if you look right here, you'll see a really neat animal.

There's a southern toad.

And this is a really big toad.

And I'll betcha it's a female.

Now, toads like this can sit on your front porch and eat lots and lots of insects.

So they're extremely beneficial.

Let's pick this one up and see if I'm right, see if it is a female.

If you look right here, you notice there's no dark throat patch right here, so it is a female for sure.

So, toads have some kind of neat features.

One thing is they have these parotoid glands right here.

And you can see those real well.

Those parotoid glands are actually poison glands.

And if a predator grabs and tries to eat this toad, it's going to make it very, very sick.

Now, toads aren't real athletic.

They just kind of hop.

They're not big leapers the way frogs are.

But these poison glands really help to protect them.

Also, they're wonderful at camouflage.

Toads are pretty accomplished predators.

They eat beetles and moths and all sorts of things like that.

And, again, very, very good to have around.

So we'll let this little guy go and let him hop off.

As I said, he's not the most athletic toad in the world, but I see something else that's right behind me that's a lot more athletic.

In fact, it's one of the tree frogs.

And he's stuck to the window right here.

In fact, this is a little guy.

You can tell it's a green tree frog by that beautiful stripe that runs down its body.

As an adult, this frog will get about that long, so you see he's only about half as big as he's going to get.

Now, this tree frog is here because there's a lot of insects buzzing around.

And this tree frog will probably spend the entire warm season out on the front porch catching bugs and getting bigger and then eventually he'll have to go find a wetland.

I'm sure there's a wetland nearby here where it can lay its eggs, and hopefully more young tree frogs will show up on the same porch.

I'm going to pick this guy up and let's get a closer look at him.

They are really athletic little guys.

And you notice very, very long back legs.

Very different build from the toad that we looked at.

They also have sticky toe discs, so each one of their toes -- like the other tree frogs -- has a sticky suction-cup type thing that allows it to stick to glass.

Now, they can climb up vegetation.

They can also go up the sides of trees.

And this not only allows them to get up high where they can catch insects, but an adult male, for instance, needs to get up high where it can call and find a mate.

I also saw a couple insects crawling up here, including a really pretty green grasshopper right up in here.

And insects are attracted to these lights.

And that's why the frogs are here, but bugs are positively phototaxic.

In other words, they're attracted to light.

And there's mosquitoes buzzing around here, and there's some crane flies.

Now, I also see something else that's really, really neat.

And that's right down here at the base of the wall.

And this is a slug.

And not everybody likes slugs, but I'll tell you what, they've got some really cool things.

First of all -- and I don't want to disturb him, but if I'm really careful, I can point at these tentacles right here.

And there's really two sets of tentacles.

One set of tentacles is down low and it picks up scent, and then there's another set of tentacles that are up higher and they can perceive light.

And so two very different things for very similar appendages.

Now, the other thing you notice, this thing is literally glistening with slime, and they are covered with a real thick mucus-y layer.

And if you pick a slug up, this stuff is really viscous and sticks to your hands and then dries and gets kind of crusty afterwards.

Now, slugs are terrestrial gastropods.

They're snails without a shell, basically.

And they feed primarily on plant material.

In fact, they're real pests to gardens and things like that.

A lot of people are constantly trying to get rid of slugs out of their gardens.

They have raspy mouth parts, and they will actually feed on plant material with those raspy mouth parts and then eat it.

They feed mostly at night, and during the day, they're generally hidden underneath things and staying very dormant.

There are some things that eat them.

Box turtles love to eat them.

Certain lizards will feed on them.

This guy is really stretched out and very elongate.

But if I touch him just on the tip of the tentacle, he balls up and becomes very truncated and short.

It looks less appetizing that way, I guess.

You know, whether you're out looking for stuff during the day or at night, there's incredible diversity of life in the LowCountry.

In fact, there's a ton of stuff in your very own backyard.

Thanks for joining us on "Coastal Kingdom."