A Cicada swan song in this region
It would appear that our sizeable summer swarm of cicadas has left the building, or at least no longer lingers in our fields and forests here in this corner of the Commonwealth.
My own anecdotal assessment of the situation is based on the lack of cicada chatter on nature’s airways these days. In our neck of Penn’s Woods the once vast orchestral chorus of Brood X (this year’s monster edition of the 17-year cicada) gradually faded away to just a few voices last week and to a muted silence by the weekend.
It’s estimated that billions of cicadas scratched that 17-year itch this summer in the biggest emergence of these odd little insects since 2004 (you’ll notice that was 17 years ago). The socalled Great Eastern Brood engulfed a region from Tennessee to New England this spring and summer. Here in southeastern Pennsylvania, this brood emerged later than sooner and lingered longer than many other areas in the northeast.
Nonetheless, after spend
ing 17 long years hanging out in their subterranean lairs, these emergent cicadas were ready to do their thing — namely shed their skins (i.e. exoskeletons), find a mate, and lay their eggs. In actuality, that cicada chatter referenced above is created by the male cicada in search of a willing female.
The buzzing sound they make comes from the vibration of their tymbal (an organ that emits the buzzing sound when flexed)and can reach as high as 96 decibels.
These noisy courtship rituals played out with great volume on our Northbrook acreage just outside of West Chester. But the relentless chatter or droning was just one indication of the presence of hoards of these little buggers.
Our backyard was thoroughly perforated by the tunnel exits used by the emerging cicadas. Many of these finger-sized holes boasted little towers or “chimneys” created by the insects upon leaving the soil.
Another sign of the broad breadth of this “hatch” included the plentiful numbers of abandoned cicada exoskeletons left clinging to our trees, decks, and fence posts, far more than we had ever observed in our twenty-four years living at this address.
In the process we also noticed that something had been rooting around among these cicada exit tunnels, so I set out a motion-activated trail camera to find out what was doing the digging. The images that appeared revealed a number of culprits — mostly raccoons but also an opossum and even a fox that were foraging for these ill-fated cicada grubs even before they could see the light of day.
Once these cicadas emerge they become a movable feast for a host of predatory birds, mammals, and even fish. In fact, when this year’s brood peaked in numbers this summer, quite a few fishermen reported success using artificial lures resembling cicadas.
Unlike a number of insect pests such as the invasive gypsy moth and lantern fly, cicadas are relatively harmless when it comes to damaging crops, gardens, or vegetation in general. At most, cicadas may be responsible for some minor damage to trees due to the process whereby they lay their eggs in batches placed in slits or crevices made by the female cicada at the end of thin tree branches.
Each crevice may contain as many as 30 eggs but each branch can service numerous such slits the female cicada makes while moving up each branch and depositing as many as 500 eggs in dozens of such clutches. This practice may cause the branch to wilt and die as the leaves turn brown and the branches eventually drop to the ground. This phenomenon is known as flagging but most affected trees quickly recover none the worse for wear.
After dwelling underground for 17 years, the cicada’s existence above ground is comparatively short lived with a postemergent lifespan of just four to six weeks, enough time to court, mate, lay eggs, and set the stage for another brood to emerge circa 2038.
ARCHERY SEASON NOW IN PLAY HERE » Archery season for both antlered and antlerless whitetail deer here in Wildlife Management Units (WMU) 5C and 5D is now in play. Opening day on Saturday dawned still, calm, and mild here, providing fairly decent early morning conditions for diehard bowmen.
But by early afternoon the heat and humidity turned on and the mosquitoes had a field day. Such muggy and buggy circumstances do not make for a pleasant outing in the deer woods.
But hey, it was still summer on Saturday and with autumn scheduled to hit town tomorrow on Sept. 22 you can count on crisp and cooler fall days ahead far better suited for time spent afield.
Archery whitetail deer hunters have now joined dove hunters and goose hunters since the seasons on those popular game birds opened back on Sept. 1. The regular dove season runs through Nov. 26 while the early goose season closes later this week on Sept. 25. Our regular archery season here in WMUs 5C and 5D runs through Nov. 26.
ANTLERLESS DEER LICENSE AVAILABILITY » Hunters can now purchase any remaining antlerless deer licenses over the counter. These licenses have already sold out in 15 of Pennsylvania’s 23 Wildlife Management Units, but, as of yesterday, here in the southeastern corner of the state, WMU 5C still had 6,451 licenses of the original 70,000 allotted available and WMU 5D had 4,602 of the 29,000 initially allotted available.
By the way, hunters are no longer limited to buying just three antlerless permits apiece since the Pennsylvania Game Commission has now lifted that restriction and hunters are free to purchase as many antlerless licenses as they want for $6.97 apiece for resident hunters and $26.97 for non residents while supplies last.