Cicadas

While we were at Mount Emblem Cemetery last Monday, we immediately heard and saw the periodical cicadas that are emerging here. It is the year of the emergence of the 17-year periodical cicadas in this area of the country (https://www.britannica.com/animal/homopteran/Natural-history#ref1301175, https://www.britannica.com/animal/homopteran/Natural-history#ref1301175). Since only certain areas of the US have these periodical cicadas, and the areas of Texas and Virginia where I have lived do not have them, I had never heard of them. Carl remembers when he was in Junior College and taking a photography course, they were emerging, and he took many black and white photos of them. That was 51 years ago -- 3 cycles ago. So, I guess the ones emerging this year are the great-grand-bugs of the ones that he took pictures of back then! (Well, except he didn't take pictures of cicadas at the cemetery that year, so maybe they are cousins of the great-grand-bugs... etc etc.)

We saw quite a number at the base of trees -- either the discarded shells, or some seemed to be dead. There were a few moving in that mass of bodies too. You can see the toe of Carl's shoe in the bottom left of the picture to get a comparison of size -- they were about 1.5" long.

One of the adults that had emerged -- with the black bodies and those red eyes, they look like some fantastical creature as described in the book of Revelation!

Left one is leaving its protective shell -- wings are coming out. Right one already has emerged.

The "shell" left behind after the adult has emerged - the back of the shell (integument) splits and the adult backs out.

Just starting to emerge from the shell

We think that the lighter colored ones have more recently emerged and will turn dark.

At different stages -- empty shell at top, emerged with deployed wings, and one whose wings have not yet straightened.

Two emerging from their shells

A short video of the two emerging:

If the embedded video does not work, it can be viewed on YouTube: https://youtube.com/shorts/z0Iog234CsM

Don't they look otherworldly?

When we got out of the Jeep, we heard a pretty constant hum, like wind blowing through high tension wires (in fact, that's what we thought it was). Then we would hear a rising and falling sound, the type of sound that we associate with the song of cicadas. The Britannica article says that the "song" is that of the male hoping to attract a female. We have heard that there are two "broods" emerging (the 17 year periodical and maybe another shorter periodical brood) - maybe the songs are from different broods? We don't know. 

We saw young trees shrouded with netting that was to keep the cicadas off of them. We weren't aware that the cicadas could damage the trees, but if you go back and read the Britannica article that I linked above, they indicate that the limbs where the females lay the eggs could be damaged and die.

We're glad that we got to see them, but we're also glad that they aren't in the campground where we're staying! Carl says that they fly around and are not very precise in their flight so can fly into you -- and they are pretty big to be flying into your face or hair or even hitting your body!