Cicadas
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So we're a couple of weeks into the Cicadapocalypse and it's been no big deal. Yea, I find a bunch of them that have burrowed up out of the ground and are in various stages of development. But it's not like we're blanketed with them.
The white cicadas are the ones that have just shed their shells. After they dry out they turn brown and look like what one expects to see. Tons of spent shells and also tons of dead cicadas. Glad I didn't pay to have my lawn aerated this spring; they're doing a bang up job.
I feel badly when I mow the lawn because I know they're hiding in the grass. I hope they forgive me.
My friend and I walk a couple of miles each day and we've seen little pockets of heavier infestations hither and yon.
And they are definitely getting louder, which tells me bigger numbers are hatching each day.
I think we have another month of this. I'll be glad when it's over. I'm a fan of nature, but I don't like bugs.
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Cigar butts with wings! I had never seen/heard cicadas before we moved to Queens, NY. I think we had some every year, but not a double banner year like this one.
We don’t have fireflies/lightning bugs in the Pacific Northwet, either. I miss THOSE.
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Cicadas are very common in Japan, and tend to be rather popular. There's a sort of nostalgia about their chirping, and the sound is often used in TV dramas and movies to signify summer, or the passage of time... There's also a lot of stereotyping that argues that Japanese people are somehow genetically predisposed to like the sound of cicadas, while westerners dislike the sound because of similar genetic/biological reasons... It's a bit silly.
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OK, I said I don't like bugs, but I love fireflies. In Lithuanian they're called "St John's little bugs" because the come out in June. The Feast Day of St John the Baptist is June 24th.
We used to see tons of them every year but their numbers seemed to diminish a while back. I would see the odd one or two and then think, "Wait. Why haven't I seen more of them?" In recent years I think the population seems to be recovering. I've been seeing some baby ones over the last few days. They're sweet.
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I love fireflies too!! We always saw lots of them in in the backyard of our old house. I somehow think we won't see many at the new house, but of course, first we have to move in...
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Recent picture from a recent day out tuning.
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So on my phone, I took a screenshot of my photo and then cropped it and saved it. Copied and pasted into this forum. Seems to have reduced the size enough to post?
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@Rontuner
Photo looks great. Well, creepy, but great!As long as the file size is less than 2MB, it should work. Sounds like whatever you did worked; the forum software will stop you if the pic is too big. If you feel like putting something in the Tips and Tricks thread, that would help other people, me included, to post photos.
So are you posting from your phone? If yes, what do you think of the mobile interface?
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I tapped on your photo and the software opened the photo to full size. I’m on my iPad. Tons of cicadas in bigly creepy glory.
Thanks. I’ll be having bug nightmares all night.
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Yes - on my phone. Screenshot shows 1170x863 while the original shows 4032 x3024. Easier to navigate and read on the phone than the other site.
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If you think about it…the other site is supported by software that was designed before smartphones as we know them had been introduced. The iPhone was like 2007 and Android the year after. Forums and other social media sites took off after that. WTF started in 2005, I think. And the Groupee software never really kept up.
I only read WTF on my Android phone. I found it almost impossible to post from it. The iPad works fine. But I’m still an old school Windows gal most of the time.
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Omg Ron, yuck!
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LOL
There were cicadas and lightning bugs when I was a kid. Not many bugs in the Rockies. Mosquitos in the wet years.
The little lizards in Tucson must eat something. I suppose many of the bugs there are tiny. -
They are getting louder. I was working outside today and every time I came in I felt like my ears were buzzing. They're not as screechy as our annual cicadas that hatch later in the summer, but I think there are so many of them that they make up for it in sheer numbers.
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Yes. From my phone.
Today I was in a swarm area where they were flying all around. After tuning walking from the house to the car, three flew into me and hung on. Two I noticed right away and picked them off. The third was crawling up the leg of my pants once I was sitting in the car...
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It's been cooler here the last couple of nights, in the low 50s. We haven't seen as many on the driveway the last couple of mornings as we had earlier in the week. I'm wondering if the cold is slowing them down and that we'll get four days worth of them hatching at our house once the weather warms up.
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I haven't seen any here. Last time I looked at a map of cicada sightings, they ended in east Oklahoma. Our house is very literally just on the border of the former prairie. We can see I-35 from our front yard, and I've heard that the interstate and, before that, the railroad, were built on the prairie side of the prairie/woodland interface, so that they wouldn't have to cut all those trees. (I've also heard that this is oversimplified and also that the Indigenous people had modified the ecosystems in the area, so take that information that for what it's worth.) Anyway, that possible prairie-border may demarcate the edge of the cicadas' preferred ecosystem.
I know that they had apocalyptic grasshopper swarms periodically in this kind of ecosystem in the nineteenth century, so I guess it all depends on the insect.
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I was channeling my inner @Piano-Dad today vis a vis cicadas (he moves them off the roadway when he's out for a walk)...I was working my way along the sidewalk, edging the lawn before I mowed. I spotted a cicada who was going to get clobbered, so I moved him/her. I figured they had waited 17 years to lose their virginity, and who was I to cut that dream short.
I hope they have a good time tonight.
When the world wearies and society ceases to satisfy, there is always the garden - Minnie Aumônier
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Walking down Michigan Ave. this evening after dinner (downtown next to symphony center) I heard my first cicada in the city coming from a tree...
