Creatures

Cicada

This was taken on June 3, almost two weeks ago as I’m posting it. That was just about the peak of the so-called Brood X cicada swarm. It really was quite noisy. In the past I would sometimes go outside if I was on the phone. Not only is reception better, but I can avoid the parrot noise that sometimes interrupts phone calls. But with the cicadas, it really wasn’t practical. It’s interesting how variable it is throughout the neighborhood and the woods. Some places you’d expect it to be bad seem to have very few. They are pretty thick right around us, though.

Cicada Exoskeleton

We went for a walk in the park late this afternoon. We went to see if the cicada noise was louder there and were surprised to find that there were parts of the woods where we could barely hear them. Other parts were about the same as in our yard. There was plenty of evidence of cicadas throughout the woods, with the tell-tall holes in the ground where they emerged and their shed exoskeletons on leaves, branches, and trunks. I like this one, back lit by the late afternoon sun.

Cicada

The cicadas are coming, the cicadas are coming. There are two, large red oak trees in our front yard, both on the county right of way and planted when the neighborhood was built at the end of the 1960s. One of them has less than a dozen cicadas on it, the other has hundreds. This is on the second and is one of a few cicadas currently exiting their exoskeleton and transitioning to adulthood. They’re kind of creepy at this stage, all white and maggot-like. Of course, they’re nymphs for 17 years, and they are king of creepy that whole time, so I guess that’s not so surprising.