Latest / NaturallyScott / E60 Zach Steinhauser – One Million Purple Martins & South Carolina’s Greatest Wildlife SpectacleUntitled Episode

Transcript

E60 Zach Steinhauser – One Million Purple Martins & South Carolina’s Greatest Wildlife SpectacleUntitled Episode · NaturallyScott

• 0:28
  SPEAKER_02: Hello, you've been listening to One Million Snow Geese in Les Bluffs, Missouri, on a trip that I was on last week.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_02: And if you're watching this somewhere on Spotify or YouTube, you got to see those little things as well.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_02: And it's truly amazing.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_02: And it's a great tie to today's conversation.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_02: And we're gonna be we're gonna be talking about spectacles, which is what Zach is experienced with.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_02: But just so you know, the video you were watching, it wasn't dozens, it wasn't hundreds, it wasn't even hundreds of thousands.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_02: It was well over a million.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_02: The local newspaper estimated that day that there were three million.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_02: Um I think that was a bit of an exaggeration.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_02: Um so we're gonna stick with a million, but whatever it was, it was one hell of a thing to see.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_02: And we'll talk about it a bit later.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_02: This is Naturally Scott.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_02: I'm your host, Scott Harris, and I just love these podcasts.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_02: We're changing up the format a little bit.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_02: We're going from an hour to a half hour, and uh we're gonna focus on stories.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_02: People like Zach, who, by the way, is a storyteller, has a lot of stories to share with us.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_02: So we're gonna do that.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so this is a pretty exciting thing.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_02: So my guest today is Zack Stanhauser.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_02: He's a boat captain, he's a naturalist, and he is the creator of the documentary Purple Haze, which is not about Jimi Hendrix, a joke you've probably heard a billion times, Zach.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but it is about Purple Martins.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_02: And we're gonna learn about Purple Martens and the spectacle and some other things as well.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm really excited about that.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_02: I met Zach a few weeks ago.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_02: We both spoke at um, what is it, the uh the Hammock Coast uh Bird Festival uh down in southern uh South Carolina and had a blast down there.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_02: So that's a long way of my saying.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_02: Zach, welcome to the show, man.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks for being here today.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, thanks for having me, Scott.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely not other uh wild Carolinians out there.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_02: There you go.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know how many of us there are, but there's at least two, so it's a that's a good start.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_02: And this is a fun one for me because um a lot of what we're gonna talk about takes place at Lake Murray, which is about an hour from my house.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_02: But there's some other spots as well.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_02: And Zach's gonna talk about he went to Brazil.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_02: Um I'm particularly excited for him to tell a story about uh uh down in southwest U.S.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_02: and and looking for um native nesting uh spots for the purple martens rather than uh the man-made ones.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_02: But Zach, let's start with this.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_02: What is it like to be out on your pontoon boat out on Lake Murray at Balm Island, which is where the birds gather roughly in August in their migration to look up and to see maybe a million purple swallows?
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it's honestly uh it's a site that doesn't really get old.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I've been doing this now more or less 10 years, and it's always fun to just watch the flock build over the course of the summer with its peak kind of hitting that early August uh time frame, and then you're out just sitting one uh on the boat and you're with guests, and then all of a sudden, just this like wing beat, just this massive wing beaten eruption of Martin's all take off, and you're just watching this we just living and interweaving tapestry of birds as they're all flying around together.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I always have to like frantically tell people to look as they're kind of busy talking to one another on the boat, but it's it's a site that definitely doesn't get old.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: Now, is it is there a lot of sound associated with it?
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_01: Not as much as folks would think.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: Martins themselves are a pretty noisy species, but um when you're out on the lake, I mean the sound you most you get most associated are just people blasting uh the speakers on their boat.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_01: But um you do get once uh you get those massive takeoffs, you'll you will hear kind of the eruption and wing flutter of everybody just uh taking off.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_02: And is there a sense or a flash of flash of energy just before they take off?
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_02: Kind of like, oh, this is it.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_02: They're they're about to start, or do they just explode into the air?
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's just an explosion, more or less.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's hard to time.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I'd say the best indicators are if a predator is out there, say uh a lot of people think um great blue or not great uh hawks or great horned owls uh predate on the martens out there, and they don't really because the island's so isolated, but great blue herons have been nesting out there, and if you know a great blue heron, they'll eat just about anything.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: And the ones on Lake Murray have acquired a taste for purple martens in the summertime.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: So when I see a great blue heron flying across the canopy, kind of where the martens are hanging out, I'm like, I I just tell everybody, y'all just watch it's about to happen, and then they all just uh go up, and it's just such a spectacle to watch.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_02: Now the spectacle, um, and we're talking specifically right now about Balm Island in Lake Murray in South Carolina.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_02: Correct.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_02: The spectacle is twice a day, right?
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_02: They lift off in the morning and then they return back in the evening.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yep, so they'll uh take off around 6:30 in the morning, and they'll be gone for the day out feeding, but and some folks go out to watch them take off.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um I've done a couple of trips where taking I've taken clients to go see them take off.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then uh in the evening time, that's kind of when everybody, all the boaters and uh bird watchers all kind of gather gather and uh hang out and watch the birds in the sunset.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_02: So what's um I was down recently with my son in uh Texas and we saw the um Mexican Freetail bats coming out of Bracken Cave.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and there's 20 million Mexican freetail bats living in this one cave.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_02: So I don't want to see.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_02: Oh man, let me know because I can hook you up with the guy that runs it.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_02: But when they leave at night, it takes them three and a half hours to exit.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_02: It's 20 million bats.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_02: It's a hundred thousand bats per minute for three and a half hours straight.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_02: When they come back in the morning, it's less than an hour and a half.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and they're on the opposite cycle of the of the Purple Martins, right?
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_02: Because they're coming home in the morning and leaving and dispersing to go feed in the evening, is other than the convenience of getting out in the afternoon on a nice pleasant day on the lake, what's the difference between when they disperse in the morning and when they return in the evening?
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_01: I'd say the morning group, when they're trying to take off, um, they have kind of a mission already planned.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_01: They just want to get out and away from the island, and they kind of break up into their own little tribes and clicks as they're uh making their way out to their feeding grounds, and that could be anywhere around Lake Murray, around the Midlands, they could be going all the way to Lake Greenwood, even uh, because they're just trying to find those uh insect hot spots.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: So the takeoff is pretty quick.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: I'd say on a very calm morning, it can last maybe 10-15 minutes tops.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: Where um, although if you get a good windy day, like a five at five mile an hour wind pushing up towards 10, uh, you can get on the leeward side of the island, and then all the birds just take off from that side.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: So you're just like covered in this blanket of birds as they're coming across the water.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um on a calm morning, they have their own little channels they kind of take off from.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: So you don't get that blanket takeoff.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: But in the evening time, um, compared to the morning, which is about what 15 minutes tops, uh, the evening group, when they're coming in, they're still socializing and it's kind of a big party for them.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: So I usually plan to give my boat to the island with clients with about 30 to 45 minutes of view time, and it really is like slow to start.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_01: The Martins, what they like to do before they all come out to Balm Island is they like to regroup in their various tribes and cliques at different points around Bomb Island, and then they'll all head out.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_01: So, like activity starts maybe 45 minutes before sunset, and then by the time you get to uh maybe 20 minutes before sunset, that's when the activity really picks up.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: And you see start start to see martens just everywhere you look, all coming in towards Bomb Island.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: And then it lasts about maybe five minutes after five, ten minutes after sunset.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_02: Now, once once the sun sets and and 99% of them dropped into the trees on the island, are they quiet?
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_02: Or are they still asking everybody how their day went?
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they're still chatting a little bit, but they're starting to settle down.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um you and it's fun in the mornings because you can hear the island.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_01: There's no birds flying around, but you can hear the island and just the c the chorus of birds all just chattering around with each other.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_01: And uh the Martins, as they're settling in, it's still pretty noisy, but um, usually at about that time, you're just trying to make sure you can get out of traffic and head back to the marina for a safe evening.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_02: So tell us about your film.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_02: Tell us about your documentary, Purple Haze.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_02: Um, which is terrific, by the way.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_02: I'd seen it before and I watched it again last night.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_02: Um yeah, and I just I just loved it.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_02: I loved your story.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_02: So tell us what you woke up one day and said, you know what I'm gonna do?
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna travel around the world and make a film about Purple Martins.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, how does somebody do that?
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I always grew up wanting to be a wildlife filmmaker, and I um went to the University of Florida and got my degree in conservation biology because I kind of thought was that was like the planned route for filmmakers.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: I realized after graduating I needed to go more in the media arts direction.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: But umce I got out and kind of was uh starting to figure out like, all right, what do I do now?
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because the wildlife field, as I'm sure you've spoken to a lot of guests, uh a lot of entry-level jobs are very seasonal.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I graduated smack in the middle of a season, so I had no prospects, nothing.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I started talking to various professional filmmakers through social media, and I asked them, I'm like, look, I want to do this.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: How'd you get started?
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what's the trick here?
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: And they gave me the most cliche piece of advice, which is go buy a camera and go find a story to tell.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: And um I was kind of ticked about that, but that's um that was just kind of how everything fall fell into place, and so I bought the camera and I started filming these little like five, ten-minute YouTube videos about just local wildlife.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I was at a trade show for my job, and I run a retail nature center uh here in Lexington, and um the host was talking about uh purple martens and made mention how like if it weren't for retailers like us selling purple martin houses, we wouldn't have purple martens at all.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I just thought, that's weird.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: So there was a representative from the Purple Martin Conservation Association at the event as well.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: And his name's Joe Siegris, he's a good friend.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I went up to him, told him who I was, where I lived, and he's like, Oh yeah, y'all got the Balm Islanders.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, exactly.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: And so I asked him, I was like, so the thing about the housing and purple martens need to live, like, it wouldn't, they wouldn't be around if it we weren't selling housing for them.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what's that about?
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: And he said, Yeah, so 90% of purple martens um throughout North America, they only breed in bird houses.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_01: So if you don't put a birdhouse up, you're not gonna have populations around to um exist.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: And so that really dawned on me, and I made the connection that it's like, oh, so every bomb every bird I see out at Bomb Island was born in somebody's birdhouse, and w which they put up on their backyard.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_01: So it took a human effort to be able to produce something as grand and magical as Bomb Island.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: So then the thought hit me, I was like, okay, well, so if we quit putting housing out for them, then what happens?
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: And they go extinct.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_01: And Bomb Island, which is a local spectacle that's been around for 40 years now, um, coming up close to 50, um, that would be gone.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: So that's when it dawned on me, it's like, oh, that's my story right there, is going to figure out how this happened.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_02: So let me interrupt you for one second because people are gonna be curious.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_02: The reason that they need to live in the birdhouses that are supplied by people is because of the European starling.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_02: The European Starling was brought over here in 1891 uh from Great Britain from some big Shakespeare fans, a whole nother story for another show.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_02: Um but they predate um the uh the Purple Martins, or at least take over the nesting spots that uh that they would normally use, the cavities that the Purple Martins would be attracted to.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_02: Um the way the birdhouses are designed, the Martins are safe, relatively safe inside the birdhouses compared to a natural nesting cavity.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_02: So when Zach's talking about um they would be extinct if if we weren't providing these, um, that's exactly what's going on there.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_02: Is that accurate, Zach?
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: Uh more or less.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_01: I'd say the biggest thing was uh for martens changing their habitat over to an artificial setting, is starlings were definitely a part of that issue, um, competing for natural nest sites.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: But when uh Native Americans they started hanging the tradition of hanging gourds up and having martens around their agriculture and around their food stocks to catch bugs and ward off uh scavengers, but the the Europeans arrived and um things began to change.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_01: So our kind of South Carolina used to look like hardwood forests, longleaf pines, Piedmont Prairie pockets, beaver ponds everywhere.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_01: And those grasslands and those beaver ponds, those wetlands were where Purple Martins thrived.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_01: And then over time, the Europeans came and they just completely wiped the landscape clean and made everything agriculture, more or less.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: And from an ecological standpoint, a habitat transition pre or a habitat preference change usually takes tens, hundreds, thousands of years.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: Where this all happened over the course of like maybe a century, where the habitat changed so dramatically.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_01: Thankfully, Martins were already like adapting and moving into birdhouses courtesy of the natives.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: And then the Europeans adopted that tradition by building big box condos, and um all the farmers and settlers put Martin housing up on their land, so there was still cavities available for the Martins to use, and the habitat was kind of improved for them because it there were less trees and more open flyways, so the martens were just off in uh they were thriving.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: And however, because we completely changed the habitat um in such a very short ecological time frame, martens had to adapt quickly and they managed to hardwire themselves and switch their habitat preference completely over to that artificial setting.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_01: So there's currently no known nesting record of a natural nesting purple marten east of the Rockies in at least fifty to probably the past fifty years or so.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_01: So although fact technique.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, they will.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_02: One thing about our viewers is they're pretty good about finding mistakes that you or I might make.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_02: Now, you went on a mission to try to find um some natural nesting cavities that the swallows were using.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_02: That was a big part of your film, right?
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_02: So take us to the southwestern part of the United States and uh that magical time.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_01: So I started um doing research on martens and just saw they were uh lit, they had a subspecies in the southwest U.S.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: uh out in the Sonoran desert, um, out around Tucson, Arizona.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_01: And reading scientific papers saw that they could nest naturally in the big Solaro cacte they have out there.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_01: And ironically, through my retail gig, I connected through to the Tucson Audubon Society because they also have a big retail shop as part of their uh mission.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so I connected with them and took two weeks in the middle of a summer to fly out to Tucson and just roam around the national parks and all the public land they had looking for natural nesting martens.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: And kind of imprepped to do this, I just looked uh found Facebook groups for Tucson Bird Watchers.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, yo, I'm a filmmaker looking for this species, looking for natural nest, like looking for nesting pears.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_01: Does anybody have this?
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_01: Because this is like looking for a needle in a haystack almost, um for uh at least from my end, uh, because I'm so used to them being in housing and never seeing them nest naturally ever.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_01: And trying to find natural nesting birds is difficult in and of itself from any kind of photography, videography, videography standpoint.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_01: So ironically, I put the word out and like got so many callbacks and talked to the Audubon Society, they're like, Yeah, we got them nesting on our properties, come on out.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_01: So it was just uh as easy as that.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: And so I went out to uh the Audubon Society's properties.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_01: I want if I'm getting this right, I want to say it's the Mason Center they have kind of in northern Tucson, and they have like just some walking trails amongst desert habitat, and um this was my first day out there, and all of a sudden I just hear that like just chirping chime call.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, no freaking way, I just found this bird.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I just see it and follow it, and it's what's great about the desert is there's no trees to get in the way of um your view, so I'm just running up and down the trails.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_01: I have to just keep my eye on it, and then eventually I just see it perch on top of a uh big Swaro cacti that has a bunch of holes in it.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_01: So I was like, you gotta be freaking kidding me right now, and then I just have to sit there and just cross my fingers, hope, pray, do all of it, and all of a sudden I just see it hop up, fly down, and then just like fly down a little bit down the Seguaro stalk and then just disappeared.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, this cannot be real right now.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: So I just crept on over to that cactus, got into a good view, uh, and started eyeballing the cavities, and then lo and behold, out pops the head of a purple mart.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_01: And for me, I'm just like the property borders a neighborhood, but I'm also in the nature preserve.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_01: I'm trying not and I'm filmmaking, so like I'm trying to contain all of my excitement and just like whispering my shouts and fist bumps and all that.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um and then by you saw when I got in my car, just like started screaming, hooting, hollering, everything.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_01: So a great day.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_01: It was the first day too.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_01: That was like how crazy that was.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: I gave myself two weeks to um prepare for finding, try to find that scene, and it happened on day one.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: So I had 13 more days to go run around the desert.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_01: You went to other places looking, right?
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_01: Didn't you go to Brazil?
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_01: I did, yeah.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_01: So um, with going to Brazil, Purple Martins uh spend their winters in the Amazon rainforest.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: And my uh friends at the Purple Martin Conservation Association, they were planning a research expedition to the Amazon with their uh partners through various universities, um, whether that was in Canada or down in Brazil and other research institutions, and they did a big expedition to a known roosting location they had found on the Amazon River.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: So um this was right at the start of 2020, and I had filmed everything in 2019 for the most part, so um I got to coordinate with the PMCA and we got to go down uh together to Manaus, which is the city that sits along the Amazon River, where um we'd be conducting research out of where they would be.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_01: And we got to Brazil and made our way out to uh this little like barge float house type deal, and that was our research station, and we also camped on it.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_01: So we're kind of full kind of fun camping on the Amazon River, 'cause camping to them is like you sleep you string up hammocks and you sleep on a barge floating out in the middle of the river.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_01: And not a lot of people in and of itself is there's just so much I could tell you.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's it was such a magical Encounter.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_01: It's one of those childhood trips I've always wanted to take that just met every expectation and exceeded them.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_02: What were a couple of your favorite sightings outside of the Martins?
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'd say, I mean, where ironically, where we were stationed also happened to be a Amazonian river dolphin uh tourist attraction.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_01: So when we weren't doing field work in the mornings or in the evenings, we'd just be chilling, swimming in the river, and you'd have river dolphins just all swimming around you.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um and it was, I mean, that was something I had dreamed of seeing my whole life.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember talking to some of one of the scientists when we first got to the barge, and then the dolphin swam up, and I just started screaming expletives and elation and so excited to see that.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_01: And then I was like, by the way, I totally agree with your total um and just kept going back into conversation.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I was like, oh god, this guy's not gonna take me seriously whatsoever, this whole trip.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I gotta tell you though, and I I when I when I watch you in the movie and I I'm watching you struggle not to break out like a six-year-old and cheer and yell and have a good time, at least until you get back in the in the van.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, last week when I was out and I got to spend a half a week with uh the million snow geese, and then uh the other half of the week um with well over 100,000 sandhill cranes over on the Platte River in Nebraska.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_02: And there was one morning in particular, I was the only one in Les Bluffs National Wildlife Refuge.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_02: It was cold, it was 24 degrees, it was snowing, which was really bitching, by the way, to be in the snow watching snow geese.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_02: I love the poetry of that.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_02: Um but like you, I I couldn't scream and yell because I didn't want to startle the geese and send them off running, but I wanted to do that.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_02: There's just this burst of joy and energy that you wanna you want to share and it needs a release.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_02: Um so it's it's an amazing thing to see, and I'm so excited for you that you got to see that.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_02: When when you take people out to the island and they're seeing this for the first time, and you know, I assume that not everybody you take are enthusiastic birders, some of them just want to see a really cool spectacle like you know, old faithful at Yellowstone or something.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_02: Um how do they react?
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_02: Once you get them to stop talking and look up, what what are the reactions of the people that are out there?
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_01: It it's kind of a mixed bag.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_01: Some folks are a little more nonchalant to their reactions, some folks are I've had people screaming, I've had uh in just like shock and awe.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_01: I've had people um kind of have this like dumbfounded look of just like, oh my god.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um as they just like are witnessing birds coming from a whole 360-degree field all to this tiny little island, and then when they all take off, it's just even more so um met.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I'd say it's um it is fun to see like grown adults act like little kids when they see like something so exciting to them for the first time.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I that's kind of what gets it for me, is just like getting their reaction um on the first time every time I take a client out.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_01: And sometimes for me, it's even because I'll struggle like being a tour guide for 10 years to see the same thing over and over again.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_01: There's some struggles that come with that, um, with redundancy, but thankfully Mother Nature provides in ways that like is refreshing to me.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_01: Like, so we'll go to the island, we'll see a great blue heron attack the marten flock, and maybe um it'll fly down right to the bank where we can see it devour a purple marten.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um I always have to ask folks, do y'all want to go see that or do we want to just boat around?
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_01: And most of the times they're actually up for it.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_01: So it's kind of like um folks that would see like a predation in Africa that we're on safari.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I equate that to, or we'll see like deer randomly swim out to this island that is a mile from shore in every direction, and we'll see them at the shoreline.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, or we'll have a predator like a hawk or an owl or a bald eagle show up.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_01: There was uh a couple a couple times we'll get brown pelicans from the coast that are lost a hundred miles in the wrong direction.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_01: They'll wind up on Lake Murray and they'll give us a flyby.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_01: So uh there was probably my favorite one of my favorite moments from this past purple marten season.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_01: We had uh we get these birds called black terns, which is uh Arctic nesting seabird that uses freshwater lakes up in the Arctic as its habitat, but it's a seabird by evolutionary traits.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_01: And it's using these freshwater water bodies to nest up north, and then when they migrate, they migrate back through the eastern flyway, and the some will stop off on Lake Murray in August as they're migrating back to South America.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_01: And as we're going out to Bomb Island, we have to kind of go through a little bit of a storm, and in the process of doing so, it was at least a little light shower.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_01: And we get through and then we're just greeted by about 30 black tines, which is super rare for that number to be out here on Lake Murray.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_01: But they're chasing a bait ball, which then has Stryper all just going around, just hitting it from the bottom.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_01: So it's like this National Geographic moment unfolding in front of us.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_01: And to make it even better, you get a full rainbow display in the background.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_01: And so by the time we get to the to Baum Island to watch the birds, because they're still active at that point, um, you get a double rainbow.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_01: So the lake just provides in many ways.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_02: That that sounds pretty incredible.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_02: And and um for those listening and watching, uh, Zach does run trips out to Baum Island.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_02: Um pontoon boat, Zach?
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_02: Yep, does run trips out there.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_02: Go ahead and give a little call out to your website, and I'll throw it up on the screen for people who are watching, but go ahead and give us your website anyway.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, my company is called Carolina Safari Co.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_01: The website is www.carolina Safari Co.com.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_01: And we're a South Carolina-based ecotourism company, so we run uh adventures all around South Carolina, a little bit into North Carolina too, where uh we just have some this state just has so many wild treasures to offer, and I'm so lucky to have found a good chunk of them and I want to share them with the world.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_01: So highlight one more.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_01: What's one of your favorites?
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_01: One of my favorites?
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I've got so many.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_01: I'll give you two of my favorites.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_01: How about that?
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_01: That's fair.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_01: Two favorites.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um one of my absolute favorites, we go hellbender snorkeling up in uh outside of Asheville, North Carolina, where we look for North America's largest salamander species, the hellbender.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_01: And we do that around Labor Day, where the hellbenders are in their breeding run and they're just out all across the rivers when they're normally a nocturnal species the rest of the year.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_01: And it's so much fun finding one of those because it's like seeing a dinosaur for the first time.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_01: And then my second favorite is probably going down to the coast where we uh go and watch the stranding dolphins um that uh have learned a hunting strategy unique to any other dolphin species.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_01: It's South Carolina's one of the few places in the world you see this feeding behavior, but dolphins have learned to corral fish up against uh shorelines, and then once they're ready and able, they all just work together and just rush them onto the beach and um scare the fish up onto shore, and then as the fish flop back down, the dolphins are that they're ready to pick them off.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_01: What time of year is that?
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_01: That one's in September as well.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_01: Usually it uh takes place year-round, but we usually go in uh mid to late September um as it starts cooling off.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_02: Well, hey, um, God, I hate that.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_02: I cannot believe how fast our time has flown by already.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_02: Um I'm gonna throw my email up here.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_02: If you're listening, it's Scott at naturaliscott.com.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_02: If you've got questions for me, please send them.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_02: If you've got them for Zach, send them and I'll forward them or go straight to his website and ask him.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_02: Um and at the same time, if you're watching on YouTube, do me a favor and hit subscribe.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_02: Uh every time you do, YouTube pushes this out to more people.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_02: I want people to hear Zach's stories, bring in some more guests, have some fun.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_02: If you've got a comment or if you liked it, go ahead and do that too.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_02: But that subscribe thing is it's important to us, so we really appreciate it.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_02: Zach, before I let you go, what's your next project?
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_02: You did this one about six years ago.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_02: What do you have coming up?
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, that's a good question.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_01: Right now, I'm kind of just enjoying enjoying nature right now.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um through it.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_02: All right, fantastic.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_02: Well, that is great.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I like to wrap up every show the same way, and I know Zach's gonna agree with this, but I ask my listeners and my viewers to make sure to get outside as often as you can, whether that's your backyard or your local park or taking a trip out to Balm Island with Zach.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_02: Um, get out there and do that.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_02: When you do, stay safe and stay curious.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_02: Zach, thanks you so much, man, for being a part of this today.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_02: Really appreciate it.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_02: Appreciate it, Scott.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_02: Glad to be on.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_00: All right, and everybody have a great day.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for listening.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_00: You've been listening to Naturally Scott with Scott Harris.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_00: Naturally Scott is hosted by Scott Harris, produced by Justin Harris, directed and edited by Frank Sierra.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_00: Follow us on our YouTube channel at Naturally Scott and Instagram at naturally Scott Harris.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_00: If this conversation resonated with you, please follow the show, leave a review, and share it with someone who needs to hear it.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_00: Naturally Scott thanks you for viewing and listening to this podcast.