Swarmageddon: The 17-year Cicadas Are Here!

The 17 year cicadas are emerging, and boy are they making a racket! I spent Memorial Day Weekend camping in Fredericksburg, Virginia. During the day, there was a steady droning noise in the background. There were cicadas and exoskeletons everywhere. Here are some pictures and two short videos:

Cicadas first emerge when the ground temperature at about 8" deep reaches 63/64 degrees Fahrenheit. You can see all the holes in the ground where they have emerged. Yes, that's for real. And the holes went on and on...

Once they emerge, they molt and shed their exoskeletons. It seems that holly trees were a favorite of these critters. Many crawled up the tree into the leaves before molting:

Many exoskeletons dropped off and collected at the base of tree trunks. This picture was not set up. I didn't rake these together. This is how nature arranged them:

All of the trees had exoskeletons still clinging to them, with the live ones walking around them:

Cicadas look pretty freaky with their big eyes. But they actually have 3 more smaller eyes in between. Despite their size and look, they are harmless to people and other animals. This Cicada has molted out of its exoskeleton and is climbing up this tree to get away from ground predators:

I have two short videos to share. In both, you can hear the constant drone of Cicadas in the background. First is a 23 second video of a cicada climbing up a tree past exoskeletons. Once it feels it has climbed high enough, it will make noise to attract a mate. If it's a male, it will make a very loud noise with its abdomen. If it's a female, it will respond by making noise by flapping its wings. Here's a link to a 14 second video of the sound they make when they flap their wings.

These two must have fallen out of the tree while mating, because they were on the ground...

After they mate, the female deposits her eggs into slits that she cuts in a branch. She will lay several hundred eggs! After the eggs hatch, the nymphs will drop out of the tree, burrowing into the ground until it finds tree roots to suck on the sap. In 17 years, they will emerge, and the cycle starts all over again!

You can see Cicadas without waiting 17 years. Some stragglers will come out 1-2 years before and after the year they are supposed to come out. And there are also 13 year Cicadas and their stragglers. Those are the big hatches! There are also Cicadas that come out every year. If you aren't expected to have Swarmageddon in your corner of the world, it's a great time to take a trip and check it out! Google can point you to websites that track the emergence.