May 9, 2008
According to cicadamania.com the someone in Madeira has spotted the first cicada of the year. Now I know you’re thinking, “we just had cicada’s!” This is true, but these are the 14 year batch. The emergence we had a few years ago were the 17 year ones. The College of Mount St. Joseph has a wonderful cicada website that helps you track where they are now, learn more about them and more!
Essentially in this Brood XIV we will see 3 different species. In addition to looking a bit different on their undersides, they’ll each have a different mating call they sing as well.
I get so excited when cicadas come out. Although, they can be a bit defining at times, there’s something so neat and mysterious about them. I can remember as a kid being totally freaked out by them and not really understanding why only sometimes these loud ugly bugs would come out. During the brood 17 emergence a few years ago, I enjoyed watching them try to fly around and basically dive bomb into things… Such big wings, its a pitty they can’t use them well.
Here is a haiku, I wrote for the occasion:
Oh fourteen year friend
Cicada, where have you been?
You have now surfaced
May 17, 2008 at 3:37 pm
Jami,
On your travels through the East Side, where have you seen the heaviest concentration of cicadas?
May 21, 2008 at 8:35 pm
Disappointingly, I haven’t seen a single one!! I was driving all through Clermont county and eastern Hamilton county last night, hoping for that oh, so familiar sound. But nothing….
May 22, 2008 at 4:31 pm
Bummer!
May 23, 2008 at 3:33 pm
seventeen cycles
red eyes sleep circannual.
then trees teem, wings sing:
fly! wake our slumbering mind!
free, shake for summer divine.
Aesop chides your song…
but for all their work, no play:
can ants live so long?
June 5, 2008 at 8:44 pm
They’re now EVERYWHERE (except Norwood). I was in West Chester last week and I heard their ear piercing song. I was in Madisonville yesterday and the same thing! I wonder why I haven’t seen one in Norwood??