Tag Archives: Cicadas

The Cicadas are Dead and Gone, But They “Leave” Behind …

31 Wednesday Jul 2013

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… Dead Leaves.

BY LOIS DESOCIO

Almost as fast as this summer’s coming of the cicadas came and went, so did all news about it. But thanks to Victoria St. Martin’s article in The Star-Ledger a few days ago, I have an explanation for the mass of brown, dead leaves that hang from the trees in my yard – not unlike Christmas ornaments made out of paper bags. The cicadas did it!

I noticed this weeks ago. At first I thought it must be a weather-thing. The poor trees. We’ve been living in the extremes for a while now – alternating heat, cold. Drenching rain; whole-tree-toppling winds. And the trees must be suffering for it. But there’s something about the synchronicity of the brown deadness, and the resulting, natural, designedly-spaced, dark tips – like freckles. There is also a hint of a reddish hue to the leaves. And they’re not falling off the trees, despite a few doses of “tree-toppling winds.” cicada 3

Turns out these leaves aren’t really dead – the cicadas just sucked the life out of them.

According to Ms. St. Martin:

The swarms of cicadas that infiltrated New Jersey have pretty much died off, but the eggs they laid in their short stay are now beginning to hatch — the precursor to their offspring setting an alarm clock for 2030 … Experts say that just before adult female cicadas die, they poke several holes in the end of tree branches and lay up to 600 eggs. The act cuts off the water and food supply to the tree, causing the leaves to turn brown.

The article continues to explain that these holes are made, “with tubes that are attached to their bodies … they can lay 25 eggs in each of the holes, which are as small as a pinprick, and the nymphs that emerge from them are as tiny as a grain of rice.”

Apparently, the nymphs then jumped out of the trees and bore down into the ground for the next 17 years – until 2030 – when they will return in, perhaps, even bigger numbers than this year.

So, in my backyard of six or seven said trees – each dead leaf, in each cluster of 30 or more dead leaves, means that those branches were drilled with dozens of pin-prick size holes. And each female cicada (remember there were billions of them this year – so I’d guess half were female), can lay up to 600 eggs. Quite remarkable.

I don’t know where I’ll living be in 2030, at the ripe old age of 75. But I hope all my trees are still here, and ready for the onslaught of those grounded nymphs, when they bore up, climb up, grow up, propagate, and eventually “leave.”

I Can’t Hear the Birds in the Forest for the Cicadas on the Trees

06 Thursday Jun 2013

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BY MARGO D. BELLER

I was driving to one of my favorite places to find birds in Morris County, New Jersey, near where I live, when I heard a strange noise and wondered what was happened to my engine.

When I stopped at an intersection, I realized it was not my engine, but an invasion.

Specifically, a cicada invasion.

You know the routine. It’s been the same since we were children. The middle of summer is defined by the whir of cicadas by day, and crickets by night. Both insects are doing the same thing – the males are calling out their availability to mate with females.

This, however, is another type of cicada. This one has the science fiction name of Brood II.

These cicadas will hang around for a few weeks calling, mating and creating new cicadas, then dying – their young not appearing for another 17 years as fully-formed teenagers itching to call and mate.

So far, this plague has not made it to my backyard – yet. Plague isn’t too strong a word either. Cicada, according to the Random House Dictionary of the English Language, is a Latin word for locust. Unlike the locust, the cicada won’t ruin crops, and it won’t bite you. But it is an ugly insect, and it makes quite a din when you have a couple of thousand going once the soil gets warm enough, as it recently did.

When I got to my birding location the cicadas were flying everywhere. The noise forced me to listen very hard to hear the catbirds, yellow warblers, house wrens and Baltimore orioles, among others. But with the exception of a few blue-gray gnatcatchers, none of the birds appeared to be going after the cicadas. Perhaps they had only just arrived this June day and the birds were too busy singing to protect their breeding territories. As I said, the usual New Jersey cicada feast starts in July when baby birds need to be fed.

Or perhaps the birds were overwhelmed by the sheer number of them.

I don’t know. But I do know I was more than a little annoyed at having to work harder than usual to hear anything over the din. I had been in the mountains of neighboring Sussex County the previous day, and had heard over 50 types of birds, and not one cicada, for which I was now grateful.

Trying to identify 50 bird calls is hard enough when they’re all going at once. Trying to identify 50 bird calls with an extra layer of cicada whirring is torture.

At some point I would hope the birds realize the early insect bonanza they have, and start eating. Birds aren’t stupid, or they wouldn’t have lasted so long.

But for this birder, the end of Brood II can’t come soon enough.

Cicadas on My Trees, My House, My Cup. And Me

30 Thursday May 2013

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BY LOIS DESOCIO

The cicadas are landing on me. First one was on the head. Second one was on the shoulder. What makes a cicada landing so freaky, aside from their baby bat-like size is, you don’t know it’s coming. There’s no buzzing. There’s no warning. There’s not even a bite, or a sting, to let you know that it digs you like a tree limb. And it does not shake off easily, despite my shrill, piercing shriek, the girly up-and-down jumping, the arms flailing like rubber. And once shaken or flicked off – I suggest a stop, drop and roll, because their unwieldy and languorous flying can take them from your head or your shoulder – smack! – right into your face.

The few people with whom I’ve shared my cicada touchdowns, and resulting freak-outs, have all responded, across the board with,”Really? I haven’t seen that many.”

Really?

As Bob and the news media has informed us – we are in the midst of the cicada sojourn. The first one in 17 years. They don’t stay for long, but billions of them, for the next month or two, will be drilling up from the ground beneath us, where they’ve been getting in gear since 1996. They then hatch, climb, crawl, and the courting male fills the woods with its clangorous, rackety mating hum. I can now hear it when I’m inside.

But were it not for the errant flying and subsequent mountings (on me), I could embrace the cool-factor of the cicada, and the science class offered right outside my back door:

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Underneath the lampost light:
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Hanging on the corner:

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In my dryer vent:
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This one got inside:
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But perhaps what is most freaky of all, is this cup that I found yesterday morning while cleaning out the outer reaches of my china hutch. I don’t know where it came from, or to whom it belonged, but it was the first time I’d reached back there in 15 (that’s almost 17) years:
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The Cicadas are Coming (Again). The Cicadas are Coming (Again). And I’m Not Jiggy With It.

25 Thursday Apr 2013

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The cicadas are coming. drawing/photocollage by Julie Seyler.

The cicadas are coming. Drawing/photocollage by Julie Seyler.

BY BOB SMITH

It’s an entomological Paul Revere moment: the cicadas are coming. Every 17 years these giant, ugly bugs burrow out of their holes in the ground and crawl up every tree in sight en route to the upper branches to mate. On the way,
they make a cacophonous clacking racket as they molt, leaving empty husks of themselves clinging to crevices in the bark. Once the ground temperature reaches 64 degrees Fahrenheit or so, here they come.

The first time cicadas appeared in my lifetime I was seven years old, in second grade at Merritt Memorial School. I was in love with my teacher and a little girl named Charlotte with curly brown hair. I remember reading aloud in class and feeling frustrated when my friend Pete struggled with simple words.

When they emerged again in 1979 I was 24. I was working full-time as a garbage man because it paid roughly twice what I’d earned as a textbook editor, the only job for which I was qualified by my undergraduate degree in English. I had been married for less than a year and was just beginning to realize that it was a disastrous mistake.

I was 41 when the cicadas came again in 1996. I was divorced and fourteen years into my second (much happier) marriage. With three kids between 6 and 11, and an intense career as an attorney, I was too busy to notice the emergence of lumbering red-eyed bugs.

This year’s appearance of the cicadas finds me approaching 60. The kids are fully grown and pursuing their own lives. (Although my youngest son, for now, is doing so under our roof.) The prospect of retirement is a cold reality as opposed to a theoretical, far-off possibility. And for some reason this year’s appearance of the cicadas fills me with foreboding.

Their raucous chorus of mating calls, alien eyes and zombie demeanor, and eerie exoskeleton shadows clinging to tree trunks are bad enough. But what makes me uneasy, what really knaws at me now, is their periodicity.

I’m looking at the timeline: when they come again, I’ll be 75. What quantum changes will have happened in my life by then? What will I have gained and lost in those years while the cicadas lay deep in their burrows, sucking at the tree roots and slowly maturing, marking time until their time comes to dig out again?

And the next time they emerge – as insurance salespeople are so fond of saying, “God willing” – I’ll be 92. Will I be able to see and hear them at all? Will I care? In the words of T.S. Eliot, do I dare to eat a peach?

My chances of living to see a third cicada emergence beyond the one expected this spring are nil. Chances are I will have been deposited into my own hole in the ground long before they crawl out of theirs.

In ancient China cicadas were viewed as symbols of rebirth. Many cultures today see this periodic influx as a gastronomic opportunity. After all, these are billions of slow-moving vegetarians that don’t fly away and can’t bite humans. They’re bundles of readily available nourishment on the hoof (or the wing or weird sticky leg, whatever). Yes, for many people, cicadas are what’s for dinner. Periodically.

I’m not a cicada, so I can’t crawl into a hole and count on coming back in 17 years to climb a tree and get jiggy. But I am a bipedal, meat-eating, surface-dwelling top predator, so why not revel in my role? These fugly bugs may have a high gag factor but they’re incredibly low in cholesterol, and they’re packed with protein and nutrients.

I’ve already found a couple of good recipes. If you can’t join them, eat them.

Maybe I’ll live longer.