Cicadas

Let's face it, cicadas are cool.

They look like little buses with wings and bulging eyes. And they make the most incredible din when they park themselves up in the trees and start singing for mates.

The cicada in the above picture is called the "dog day cicada" because it is at the height of its glory during the dog days of summer. These are annual cicadas, wintering underground and climbing the trees each summer to live out their brief, noisy lives.

Then, of course, there are the 13-year and 17-year cicadas--the ones that live underground for an incredible 13 or 17 years and then emerge to see daylight for only a few short weeks.

These are known as periodical cicadas, and they are much more dramatic looking than the annual cicadas, having red eyes.

Here is a wonderful picture of a periodical cicada:


The periodical cicadas have Brood numbers to determine which type they are and where they are likely to show up. Our area is visited every 17 years by Brood X (10).

I remember living in Fairfax, Virginia, when Brood X emerged in 1987. It was absolutely amazing. They were EVERYwhere! At first I tried to avoid running into them when I was driving, but I soon realized it was utterly impossible. They plastered the roads, the trees, the sidewalks. They flew into you when you weren't looking. Fortunately, cicadas are pretty cute and not at all gross, so people don't normally mind being landed on by a cicada.

And the noise! They seem to all sing in unison, unlike the dog day cicadas which sing individually. It was deafening.

Brood X emerged again in 2004. We were living in Damascus, Maryland, at the time, and for some reason they didn't come there at all. I don't know whether they visited Carroll County. They are next scheduled to appear in 2021.

There are people who think cicadas make tasty snacks if they're roasted. I think I would simply prefer to admire their enthusiastic song during the dog days of summer and snack on ice cream.

Interesting links:

The Mid-Atlantic Cicada database project has a Brood Map and seasonal reports.

Seventeenyearcicada.com has information and fabulous pictures. Many thanks to John Spina for the photos in this blog post.

Katydids

I love this time of year--the height of summer--when you can walk outside in the evening and hear a veritable ear-splitting cacaphony of insect noises.

At the top of the list is the katydid. It's a big vivid green (or sometimes pink) insect, related to the cricket and the grasshopper, that sits calmly on tree branches and makes deafening noises by rubbing its front wings together. The call of the male, answered by the softer response of the female, supposedly sounds like "katy did, katy didn't," which is how they got their name.

Katydids are related to crickets and grasshoppers. Most varieties eat plants, but some also eat other insects. In turn they are food for plenty of other critters, including spiders, frogs, and birds.

I have sometimes picked them up gingerly by the wings to move them when they flew into the house or barn, but I just learned that they can bite if not handled properly. Good to know that!

Katydids only live about a year. The female lays eggs on the underside of plant leaves, and the hatchlings look just like the adults, only smaller.

They usually prefer to hang out high up in the trees, but every now and then one will visit your window, where, especially if it's a male, you can have full appreciation of the sheer volume of music it can make.

It always amazes me that critters like katydids, cicadas, and crickets can make sounds that seem so far out of proportion to their size. Just imagine if human children could make that much noise.

Here are some fabulous pictures:

Katydid pictures

Blind Bird

When I approached one of the bird feeders yesterday morning, there were two small finches sitting on perches on either side of it.

They allowed me to get within about ten feet without flying away. I stopped and talked to them awhile, then took another step or two closer, at which point one of the birds flew away.

The remaining bird stayed perched on the feeder as I moved closer. I noticed it was making strange movements with its head, as if it was trying to cough something up. I began to suspect that it was sick or injured.

I got to within an arm's length of the little bird, talking to it all the while, and still it did not fly away. It acted as if it didn't know I was there.

Unsure what to do, I stood still and watched it. I noticed then that something was wrong with its eyes. On closer inspection, I saw that it did not have a right eye, and the left eye looked damaged.

It wasn't until I reached my hand out slowly, wondering if I could capture the bird, that it finally realized I was there and flew up into the air, chirping in alarm. It flew in fits and starts up into the trees, doing its best to hover like a hummingbird, clearly unable to see well enough to fly directly to a particular branch. It did finally land on a branch and stayed there awhile. Later I saw it using the same hovering flight pattern to fly to a different branch.

I'm sure I've seen that little bird before, because I recognized the unusual flight pattern. The bird is obviously either blind or nearly blind, and it's a wonder a hawk hasn't gotten it--we have regular hawk visitors to our yard. Maybe a hawk encounter caused the blindness in the first place, and the little bird somehow escaped. Or maybe the bird was blind from birth and injured its eye flying into something.

In any case, it's an inspiration to see how the little bird has managed to survive in spite of a serious handicap. Nature can often appear to be cruel, providing for the elimination of sick, injured, and weak animals.

A friend told me about a friend of hers who raises chickens. One of the peeps was blind at birth. Mama hen rejected it, but my friend's friend kept putting the peep back under the hen's wings with the rest of the peeps.

Before long, the friend was hearing the peep down in the woods, crying for help. After rescuing it several times, she watched one morning and saw the mother hen carry the peep down into the woods and leave it there. Mama was helping nature eliminate the weak. Eventually, not knowing what else to do, the friend left the peep in the woods, allowing nature to take its natural course. But it's hard for some of us humans to let nature be nature.

In any case, it is good to know that sometimes the weak do survive, in spite of nature's attempts to eliminate them. I do not know how long the little blind bird might be able to beat the odds, but for the moment, he or she has somehow managed to adapt.

Bravo, little bird.