Displaying items by tag: where are the cicadas
The sounds of silence: 17-year cicadas fade away as offspring prepare for 2038 performance
Dead cicadas are seen on concrete in Knoxville at Holston River Park. Their brief sonic reign has come to an end. Photo courtesy of Lyn Bales
The cicada soundtrack of spring and early summer has come to a quiet end
“Turn out the lights, the party’s over,” sings country music outlaw Willie Nelson. “They say that all good things must end.”
Yes. Essentially Cicadapalooza 2021 is over. There may be a few late emerging males hanging on like the last few guys in the bar at closing time with hope against hope that somehow they will get lucky and Miss Wonderful will walk through the door. In this case, a female 17-year cicada clicks and clicks to let the male know she is interested or desperate to complete her mission.
As a rule of thumb, the entire periodical cicada phenomenon lasts four to six weeks but it is extremely weather dependent. Insects are ectothermic and need warm to hot temperatures to be active.
I saw my first evidence the cicada emergence had begun at Ijams Nature Center, where I worked for 20 years as a naturalist. Executive director Amber Parker told me where to look for emergence holes: under the sugar maple at the back of the Universal Trail. That was on April 20. I found the small exit tunnels but no cicadas or exuviae. I knew skunks, foxes, crows, jays, owls, dogs, cats, and anything else that will eat a bug quickly consume the first ones above ground.
Brood X is not a bust. Wait for it...
Eva Millwood holds Brood X cicadas on her property in South Knoxville in this submitted photo.
We will see a groundswell of East Tennessee 17-year cicadas as the heat comes on.
We have been hearing about it for weeks, online and on TV and in print. After 17 years underground, millions of cicadas are going to climb out of their burrows, shed their juvenile skins, unfurl their wings and fly up into the trees for one last grand jester of panache and reproduction and death. You even read about Brood X cicadas in Hellbender Press.
The Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency posted a recent Instagram photo of a wild turkey jake with a crop stuffed full of cicadas, and there are reports of cicadas emerging en masse in parts of Tennessee. But your local searching self may ask: Where are they?
Insects are largely ectothermic. That means their body temperature comes from the surrounding air, water or ground temperature. The periodical cicadas need a ground temperature of roughly 68 degrees, eight inches deep to become very active. And we really have not had that for a sustained length of time.
Last week seemed to be destined to be the first big week of the emergence of Brood X. Monday started strong but the weather turned unusually cool for early May with daytime highs in the low 60s. Some of the cicadas started to ease out but it was primarily dozens, not hundreds or thousands, and certainly not 1.5 million per occupied acre. And remember, they are not everywhere.