The Great Southern Brood (Cicadas) is in full hatch and the woods are literally roaring at 100+db. They will keep up their song in the daylight hours for
3-4 weeks and then be gone for 13 years.
This is the third hatching that I remember and the largest so far, may we all be around to hear three more.
Sound incredible. The 13 year cycle is interesting. Not that many birds do that.
I remember my youth near a swamp/pond/wetlands when the bullfrogs would roar all night long. One frog doesn't make that much noise. But multiply it by a thousand or so, the noise levels get right up there.
Now are things going in your neck of the woods after the recent storm activity?
Oops, I screwed up. You were talking about insects, not birds. My wife watches nature shows all the time and I just assumed they were birds. She has watched several bird shows in the last week. And three volcano shows. She is a total geology and nature fan.
I always enjoy the cicadas, be they 7, 13 or 17 year ones. To me, they epitomize summer. I also feel sorry for them, singing away about their own death...just imagine, all that time in the ground and such a short time to enjoy renewing their cycle of life.
Things have went surprisingly well, most of the missing were accounted for without increasing the death toll only slightly. A lot of cleanup has been accomplished, not any rebuilding yet but it will happen soon. It seems that every able bodied person in the state has contributed in some way to the relief of those affected, a local radio station chain pretty much turned over the airwaves to connecting the haves with the have nots, it is the way America is supposed to work.
Same here, SWMBO has a masters in Anthropolgy and Biology, I've seen every nature show available to mankind.
The Cicadas annoy a lot of people, but they are music to my ears, reminds one of the drones on a bagpipe. The birds love em, the first few billion out of the ground probably get eaten.
Different species. The ones called "periodic cicadas" are either
13 year broods or 17 year broods, with neither overlapping.
The every-summer cicadas are actually 3 year cicadas, but there are
3 broods overlapping.
I hate that usage, but gave up the argument years ago. My first exposure was the first full summer in Virginia (having moved in the previous August). I was 12 and they freaked me out. Something about the bulging red eyes.
Now I like them, though we are just outside (~10-20 miles) of the brood range for this end of Ohio. We had our emergence a few years ago. The annual ones are the song of the summer.
I've heard other such reports from other areas but nothing here past some crickets chirping and the odd frog. I remember there was a pretty big hatch three years ago in the Cincinatti area.
There's an informed volcano girl on sci.geology. There is also a large contingent of trolls whom make the group pleasant, if sometimes unfortunately sparse, reading once they are blocked.. But your wife might enjoy the highlights.
If your wife has not seen the Scablands presentation that PBS did, get her a copy; quite the intelligible and dramatic presentation. As always without first-hand observation, there's room for some difference in explanation but the effort was very workmanlike by my conception.
Perhaps there's an audio of your cicadian chorus on the web. I've found fossils in the California asphalt deposits but they didn't talk back much. A few summer stays around Bloomington introduced my ears to the tidal play of crickets. If that pales against the surging of your current performers, it must be something.
I would guess the pleasure was denied me. My visits stretched a week at a time over 3 years using IU as a convention center. For a person used to humidity being close as the ocean, the difference in atmospheres was memorable, including the nights of cricket a capella.
The only other mass encounter to mention with the bugs was in the vast basin off of the transverse San Emigdio range in California where we felt a days-long rush of cricket hordes. The snap-crackle-pop sound from necessarily driving over them was neither music nor advertisement to the ears.
I've seem fireflies in the mid Willamette Valley. Not the hordes we had in NW Ohio, but at least some. Salem has red squirrels, which are common east of the Mississippi, but not so common out here.
I don't miss that one damn cricket in the basement that would start up just as you were drifting off to sleep ...
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