Late yesterday morning, Monday, July 28, we finally heard the third species of Annual Cicada singing in our neighborhood: Tibicen canicularis. Go to this page to hear its song: http://insects.ummz.lsa.umich.edu/fauna/michigan_cicadas/Michigan/Index.html#Tibicen_canicularis
Three species of Annual Cicada is what we usually hear in a summer. Now we’ll keep listening, though, and see if we can hear a fourth species, or even more. There are at least a couple more possibilities, as shown on this page: http://insects.ummz.lsa.umich.edu/fauna/michigan_cicadas/Michigan/Index.html (Chicago, where we live, seems very close to Michigan in cicada terms, although I wonder if we may have some additional prairie species as possibilities.)
We’ll report any results on this blog.
One Friday, July 25, Dad walked out on the front porch at about 12 Noon and heard our neighborhood’s second species of Annual Cicada for 2008: Tibicen linnei. (Sorry, cicada species don’t have common names.) To hear what this species sounds like, go to this web page: http://insects.ummz.lsa.umich.edu/fauna/michigan_cicadas/Michigan/Index.html#Tibicen_linnei
We are still expecting to hear at least one more species in our neighborhood: Tibicen canicularis. Go to this page to hear its song: http://insects.ummz.lsa.umich.edu/fauna/michigan_cicadas/Michigan/Index.html#Tibicen_canicularis
Dad’s personal year list of cicadas includes one additional species, which he heard on July 22 while collecting data for an evaluation project at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. However, we have no idea what species it was.
Late yesterday afternoon we heard our first Annual Cicada of the year here in south Oak Park, Illinois. It was a Tibicen pruinosa singing in an ash tree by the fire station, three blocks from our house. About an hour before sunset we heard a couple of the same species singing in trees just west of our backyard.
Go here to see and hear examples of Tibicen pruinosa, (Sorry, cicada species don’t have common names.)
http://insects.ummz.lsa.umich.edu/fauna/michigan_cicadas/Michigan/Index.html#Tibicen_pruinosus
Last year we heard our first Tibicen pruinosa on June 26, and the year before we first heard them on June 27. This year they seem a bit late, although there have been years when we did not hear them until early July. Here is a page with some of our earlier records for first and last dates for Annual Cicadas: http://saltthesandbox.org/cicada_hunt/DatesFound.htm
So, it feels like summer is finally here, at least for cicadas! On the other hand, in our birding we are discovering that autumn migration has begun, with shorebirds like Lesser Yellowlegs and Red-necked Phalaropes already heading south. It seems that nature’s seasons are much more complex than the human calendar suggests.