I’ve done some reorganizing on the Kids’ Cicada Hunt website. The following page is now our centralized collection of links to periodical cicada information:
http://www.saltthesandbox.org/cicada_hunt/SeventeenYearLocust.htm
You can read our story of when periodical cicadas came to our area four years early by going here:
http://www.saltthesandbox.org/cicada_hunt/Periodical2003.htm
I’ve also added entires on our Exhibits and Programs page and our Articles about Periodical Cicadas page:
http://www.saltthesandbox.org/cicada_hunt/ExhibitsPrograms.htm
http://www.saltthesandbox.org/cicada_hunt/PeriodicalChicago.htm
That’s it for now.
One of our goals this year is to see and hear things about periodical cicadas that we never paid much attention to before. For instance, we suspect that we will start finding cicada nymphs underground, but close to the surface, several weeks before they actually emerge and grow their wings. So, we’ve been checking under flat rocks that we’ve placed in our front yeard specifically as places for kids to hunt for bugs and worms.
It’s been warm and rainy for several days now, so we checked under our rocks again this morning. We found lots of earthworms of all sizes, some millipedes, and two small ground beetles, but no cicada nymphs–yet! We’ll keep checking every few days and post it here when the nymphs first appear.
We have lots more things we will be looking for, because we have lots of questions about periodical cicadas that we hope to answer through our own observations. For instance, what time of day do cicadas emerge? Do they really emerge all at once, or do they emerge over days or weeks–do some come out in advance of the peak emergence and some straggle behind the others? What do periodical cicadas sound like? Can we hear them even with our doors and windows closed? Can we use the sounds to tell if the periodical cicadas in our neighborhood are all one species, or do we hear sounds from more than one species (as we do with our annual cicadas)? What eats cicada? What do cicadas taste like?
We’ve read other people’s answers to many of these questions, but we want to find our own answers. In our experience, the answers you find in books and online are often incomplete and are sometimes incorrect. The incorrect answers are often over generalizations–so we want to find out what’s true for the year’s emergence in our neighborhood.
Here, finally, is my link to a list of Chicago-area exhibits and programs about periodical cicadas, which I added to our Kids’ Cicada Hunt website:
http://www.saltthesandbox.org/cicada_hunt/ExhibitsPrograms.htm
It seems that nothing begins much before mid-April. We will try to keep this list up to date.
I’ve added a Kids’ Cicada Hunt page with links to articles about periodical cicadas from Chicago-area news sources: http://saltthesandbox.org/cicada_hunt/PeriodicalChicago.htm
Some of these articles refer to programs and exhibits being put together by places like The Grove Nature Center in Glenview, Illinois, and Morton Arboretum, in Lisle, Illinois. I’ll put together a list of those special events during the next week.
It’s mid-March as I write this post, and the emergence of periodical cicadas in the Chicago area probably won’t begin before mid-May. However, we’ve had two experiences that suggest we can start looking for cicada nymphs in the soil during the weeks before their emergence from the ground.
1. Back in 2000, our street was resurfaced starting in early June. The workers dug out long trenches, about two to three feet deep, when they pulled up and replaced the curbs. Within these trenches, we found annual cicada nymphs in their burrows, 12-24 inches below the surface. That was still a month before the annual cicadas started to emerge that summer.
2. In 2004, Ethan and I visited Southern Indiana a few weeks before periodical cicadas emerged in that state. When we turned over rotten logs in the woods, we found a few periodical cicada nymphs that had already burrowed almost to the surface.
So, this spring we plan to examine every freshly dug hole we can find and turn over logs and rocks whenever it seems safe to do so (for us and the animals that might live under them). We’ll post descriptions and pictures of what we find, just hours after we find it..
Our family’s interest in cicadas goes back to when the kids were really young. One summer evening we discovered an annual cicada nymph on a tree trunk in front of our house. We watched it start to shed its skin until the kids had to go to bed. Then Dad took his new digital camera outside and took pictures every few minutes until the ex-nymph had grown its wings and started crawling farther up the tree. You can see those photos here: http://saltthesandbox.org/cicada_hunt/OvernightNoText.htm
One thing led to another, and by August, 2000, Dad had put together a whole website about cicadas called Kids’ Cicada Hunt! http://saltthesandbox.org/cicada_hunt/index.htm
Our first adventures with periodical cicadas took place in early June, 2003. We found a bunch of periodical cicadas that emerged four years earlier than expected in our area. We tell that story starting here: http://saltthesandbox.org/cicada_hunt/SeventeenYearLocust.htm#early
So, we’ve been posting cicada stories on the Web for years now, but this is the first time we have tried to tell a cicada story as it happens using a blog. We hope we don’t get too busy to keep things up to date!
Periodical cicadas are the kind of cicada that only emerge in a given area every 17 years or so. (More about the “or so” in a later post.) And 2007 is the year for periodical cicadas to emerge in the Chicago area, where we live.
How do we know that? Well, I’m the Dad in this familiy — 56 years old — and I remember the last big year for periodical cicadas around here — 1990 — and that’s 17 years ago. Lots of us older people have those kinds of memories, which is one of the things that make periodical cicadas so special. (More on ”memories of periodical cicadas” in a later post.)
The other way we know is by going to maps posted on the Web, like this one: http://insects.ummz.lsa.umich.edu/fauna/michigan_cicadas/Periodical/BroodXIII.html
Cicada scientists refer to the group of cicadas that emerge this year as Brood XIII (Brood 13), and Chicago, Illinois, is right in the middle of the map area for that brood.
So, I’m excited, and my kids (Ethan, 11, and Aaron, 10) are excited. In fact, we are expecting the first periodical cicadas to emerge from the ground shortly after Ethan’s birthday (which is May 13), and then to continue to emerge into June. However, we also will be keeping our eyes open for the underground nymphs in the weeks before the first emergence. (Again, more about that in a later post.)
This is our first posting for CicadaBlog! Our family is going to use this blog to keep track of our local emergence of periodical cicadas this spring. We will explain more in the next few posts.