We didn’t know it at the time, but it seems our neighborhood heard its last Annual Cicada of 2009 on Friday, October 9th. Then freezing temperatures over Columbus Day weekend killed off whatever adult cicadas remained in Oak Park’s trees.
As promised, we’ve been blogging about cicadas on Neighborhood Nature: Our Family’s Nature Blog. Here’s a list of our posts:
July 12: We Just Heard Our First Annual Cicadas of 2009!
July 20: Another Annual Cicada, Revving Up its Song
August 12: Finally a Cicada Skin!
August 16: Cicada Killer Wasps Are Back!
August 25: What Happened to this Year’s Cicadas?
September 1:
Cicadas Are Singing, So It Finally Sounds Like Summer!
September 3: Cardinal Eats Cicada: Two Interests Collide
September 3: Cicada FAIL: Growing Up Is Hard To Do
September 9: Cicada on the Sidewalk: Not Quite Dead
October 20: Katydids 1, Cicadas 0
So, Oak Park’s adult cicadas are done for 2009. We’ll probably find a few more cicada bodies laying around — appropriate for Halloween. But if we want to find living cicadas in our neighborhood this time of year, we would have to dig a hole under a tree, then sift through the soil until we find a cicada nymph sucking on a root.
Somehow, I don’t think we are going to do that. We’ll miss the cicadas, but not that much.
But come spring our thoughts will turn to the upcoming summer’s cicadas. As we flip over rocks in our front yard searching for beetles, sowbugs, and worms, we’ll hope to see our first cicada of 2010 — as a nymph burrowing towards the surface, preparing to emerge and start the summer chorus anew.