Posted on 01/13/2024 3:32:23 AM PST by week 71
Oops...touor = tour.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3KJoMctnDo
Swamp Sounds at Night - Frogs, Crickets, Sleep & Relaxation Nature Sounds,
Evidently there is a market for them....................
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/14-fun-facts-about-cicadas-180977361/
By emerging all at once in densities of up to 1.5 million per acre, cicadas manage to overwhelm predators, from songbirds to skunks, who quickly get too full to take another bite of the buzzing buffet.
One hypothesis for the reason behind the periodical cicadas’ seemingly inscrutable selections of 13- and 17-year increments for their reproductive cycle centers around the fact that both numbers are prime. The idea is that by popping out of the ground only in prime numbered intervals, periodical cicadas avoid ever synching up with booming populations of predators, which tend to rise and fall on two to ten year cycles, wrote Patrick Di Justo for the New Yorker in 2013.
Mathematically speaking, the logic checks out, but the thousands of cicada species around the world that don’t have synchronized brood emergences in prime increments cause cicada researchers to wonder if this is the whole story. If the periodical cicada’s unique life cycle is so uniquely advantageous, why haven’t the rest evolved similar reproductive strategies?
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/14-fun-facts-about-cicadas-180977361/
Noisy bugs. Not like they’re Shark-cadas or anything.
(dibs on the movie rights for Shark Week)
Had no idea what they were until I visited relatives in Indiana - horrible. Chiggers too, which we do not have in California.
Will not be visiting if there is a “super bloom” of these little monsters.
The adults flying and buzzing are just looking to breed. I don't even know if they eat anything as adults. Once they breed and the females lay their eggs they die. The eggs hatch, the larvae crawl undreground and eat for many years until it is time to come out 13 or 17 years later and look for some love again.
Other species of cicadas don't synchronize, so they come out after a few years but not by the millions. Some of the periodic ones also miscount time so a few may come out early or late.
“ a tsp of Chinese huajiao prickly ash buds.”
Darn. I’m all out of Chinese huajiao prickly ash buds.
Oh well. Guess I’ll make a nice T bone steak for dinner instead.
L
The year they dedicated the WW2 Memorial, it was difficult to get a hotel room in DC so had to go about an hours ride into VA. That year it was horrible, you couldn’t walk down the sidewalk without stepping on dead or dying cicadas. Now at the age of 71, I have the same sound in my ears as back then, but it permit now.
What is a cicada killer?
A bird? A raccoon? A cat? Other?
Back in the early ‘70s, Hillsboro High School in Nashville did not have air conditioning and it was difficult to hear the teacher over the sound of the cicadas. We called them locusts which is incorrect but traditional like calling bison “buffalos”.
They really like those big suburban yards and like fireflies seem thicker in the suburbs than in the country.
They can fly but not well so when mowing the grass, they often errantly fly and smack into the yard boy (me). Fortunately, they don’t all take wing at once in swarms.
Take a look. The little Jack Russell is gone. He passed from old age, and I have Mountain Feists now that are related to him. Most of these pictures are old and my granddaughter is grown, but the farm is the same.
By looking at the maps of the areas the two broods are located, this is all a bunch of hogwash because there will be very little overlap.
So do I! But now that you mentioned it, it just got louder....LOL!
I’m way out in the country on a farm between Chattanooga and Knoxville and they are deafening in summer. I can’t imagine 3X as many all at the same time.
They're a solitary wasp that digs a hole in the sand then drags the killed cicada into it and lays its eggs on it. Then the hatched larva will feed on it then emerge the following late summer and repeat the cycle.
They are harmless and I get a kick out of watching them. What's amazing about them is the fact they can fly with the killed cicada back to its hole.
I was admiring your farm pics with just a bit of jealousy. That farm is such a beautiful spread.
The wife and I rented a cabin, for a weekend, on a lake at a SC State Park. SC has a great state park system with cabins at many of the parks. (Reserve early!) That particular weekend, the cicadas were emerging. Between the cicadas and the tree frogs...it was a roar. Still, we got used to it and it was a great trip. There was even a Cicada Festival at a nearby small town...complete with cicada pizza. No...I didn’t sample the pizza.
We like it. We have been here for 35 years, so we have been fairly insulated from a lot of liberal politics.
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