No bugs here...

[altivo]

...if they are bugs. This was the day the media has been trumpeting for weeks. The day when hordes of cicadas were supposed to emerge from the ground, deafening everyone with their racket, terrifying small children and weak hearted adults, and being eaten and barfed back up by dogs and cats.

Nope. We didn't see or hear any. Seventeen years ago there was a similar media circus. We saw one (only one) and it was already dead when Gary found it. I think seventeen year cyclical insects are rather overrated at this point. Maybe there were a lot more of them a century ago, before everything was full of pesticides and pollution, but I suspect they are being driven out of existence just like much of the rest of nature.

In theory, our area should be a good candidate. We have lots of trees, and large areas of ground that have gone undisturbed for decades, both in woodlots and in the rows of trees and hedges that so often divide farm fields. The little screechers may be here, but the ground is so hard and dry that perhaps they can't force their way out of it and are suffocating, trapped underground like Poe's premature burial victim. But more likely I think, they just aren't here to emerge. Probably the population was thinned out to non-existence by DDT some 60 years ago.

Comments

[chakawolf.livejournal.com]

We have those every year here in Texas. I used to shoot 'em with my .22 when I was a kid.

I like to tell people that the friction from all those wings rubbing together is what makes it hot in the summertime. Every once in a while I get a sucker to buy it!

[altivo.livejournal.com]

There are a number of different species. We have annual ones here too (or perhaps they take two or three years but there are lots of them every year. Typically those don't show up until a little later in the year, July and August when it is much more hot and humid. And yes, they make a tremendous racket.

The area around Chicago and stretching out 80 or 100 miles from the lake is one of many zones where the 17 year variety are found, as well. I've been here for 30 years come July, so this is only the second cycle I've seen. Before that I lived in Michigan, and though they are found there as well, the cycle comes on a different year. I never witnessed any major emergence there either.

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

We get them but not in that kind of group, I wonder if your cicadas sound different to ours. I know the Japanese ones are different. Ours make a constant sound the Japanese ones make a siren type effect Whhinnnn Whhinnnn Whhhinnnn.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

The varieties we have here every year, as opposed to this odd species that takes 17 years to mature, are rather like what you describe. They sit in the tops of trees and make a tremendous racket on warm, humid summer afternoons and evenings. I have noticed two "dialects" but I don't know whether they are different species or inspired by different weather or locations. As you say, one kind makes a constant high pitched buzz or whine. The other has a periodic undulation that I describe as "WONK...WONK...WONK..." with thousands of insects cycling together about once every two or three seconds.

We also have something else, I think they are also an insect, that sings at night, only when it's dark. They make a frog-like croak and there are a lot of them so it can be very loud up there in the trees. We call them "neeker-breekers" but I think they are katydids.

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

They can get deafening here, and a rather disgusting display if you live near a lot of trees, the setting sun can light up what looks like fine rain but is actually these things peeing.

Neekerbreekers? How cute ^.^

Katydids? Uncle Andrew!!!

[doug-taron.livejournal.com]

The media feeding frenzy over this has been, well, a typical media feeding frenzy. The May 22 date was started by early stories where reporters were pressing interviewees for a date. Somebody (I don't know who or how) cane up with the May 22 estimate. It turns out that in some ways they weren't far from off, the earliest reports for adults came on Saturday. The media, however, got totally fixated on the 22nd and presented it as though it was the date that all of the cicadas would abruptly appear. As with most insect emergences, I'm anticipating a period of sporadic emergence foolwed by a rapid upswing. I've been saying that we should be really seeing them the fourth week in may, but that isn't as sexy as an exact date. Seeing reductions in numbers would be no surprise to me. In addition to the factors that you mentioned, the recent practice of scraping off all of the topsoil when creating a housing development also scrapes off all of the cicda nymphs.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

At least around here, housing developments tend to go in where there were farm fields before, so the soil has been disturbed repeatedly by plows and cultivators every year. I don't imagine a lot of cicadas would survive that.

The places where I would think they'd show up would be the forest preserves, like Marengo Ridge or Indian Oaks (where I went birdwatching a few weeks ago) or spots like our own woodlot or the hedges between fields, where nothing is disturbed.

Still, the descriptions of thumb-sized insects appearing in such quantities that they pile up in windrows on the ground seem absurdly exaggerated. Perhaps it was like that back in the 1870s or something, but I just don't think there are any areas left pristine enough for it to happen now.

[shadow-stallion.livejournal.com]

Didn't something like this happen the last time the cicadas were supposed to emerge? I don't remember the year but I recall a media hype about them and then it turned out that there were far fewer than expected.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

The actual target year varies in different parts of the country, so it was probably different wherever you were at the time. I remember there was an emergence in Virginia a year or two ago, because xydexx commented on it and even posted a photo of one insect climbing on rigelkitty's neck. I seem to remember too that they had to go hunting for a cicada, and had some trouble finding any of them despite major media claims that there would be piles of dead bugs everywhere.

[shadow-stallion.livejournal.com]

*nods* The last huge infestation of them that I remember would have been either 1974 or 1991 for the 17-year variety in Tennesee. I think the media hype that I was thinking about might have been for the 13-year version which would have hit TN, TX and KY in 1998. Not sure where I was in '98 but I know it was in one of those three states. :P

Apparently only a few states are expecting them this year according to this: http://insects.ummz.lsa.umich.edu/fauna/michigan_cicadas/Periodical/Index.html

[doug-taron.livejournal.com]

In 2004, the last year that had a 17-year brood, there was a lot of media hype and great disappointment about the emergence. That brood ranges east and south from Indiana. It has always been the case that, within the cicada range, there are areas of very desnse populations next to areas with next to nothing. That type of nuance invariably disappears in reporting- which in this case made it sound like we would be knee-deep in cicada shells from Lake Michigan to the Mississippi. Also, I think that it's way too early to tell how large the local emergence will be. They don't all come out on the first day. By mid-week next year, we should have a good feeling for how big the emergence is, and where the areas of highest density will be. In 1990, the near-west suburbs werw the part of the Chicago area with the most cicadas. Preliminary emergence patterns this year suggest that this pattern will repeat this time around.