Cicada Journals and Archives - August 19 to August 24, 2005

08/19/05 - Added New Tibicen canicularis Female to Morphologies Page

That female that I obtained yesterday in the Cemetery in Sturbridge was added to the Morphologies in Tibicen Cicadas page today. First female that I have obtained that lived long enough to record the information.

Unusually Cold the Last Few Days

I don't know if anyone has noticed but it has been unusually cool the last few days. I haven't heard many T. canicularis and even fewer T. lyricens. I even checked out the Cicada Killers at Pine Grove Cemetery in Westford.

Unfortunately, the activity there is way down from two weeks ago. I only saw 2 males total and 3 females. One female seemed to be moving from one opened burrow to another I don't know what that is about, I was under the impression that they sealed one then created another.

One of the females after about an hour came back with a T. lyricen cicada. I could've snagged it but figured "what the hey".

I wonder if the cool weather has something to do with them dying early. Amazingly enough I could not find any dead wasps.

When I mentioned my findings to Professor Chuck Holliday who studies Cicada Killers at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania, this is what he said:

I’ve seen exactly the same thing here at Easton. A front went through five days ago with rain and cooler the day after and all of my Sphecius were gone or dead - I don’t know which. They started a week early this year here (7/4) and they appear to be finished nearly two weeks early. I very rarelt find dead cicada-killers – they seem to die while looking for food or, at least, somewhere else than their lek.

Well at least the information I report is accurate and while I'm sure that this is an indication of the coming fall season, its good to know that others can corroborate my findings.

I counted between 50 and 60 burrows so I think next year this place is going to be hopping with activity. 95% of the burrows seemed sealed to me the remaining 5 were still opened.

08/21/05 - Heavy Emergences of T. canicularis in Newton, Ma.

7:30 pm - Got a few emails from a person from Newton stating that he is experiencing heavy emergences of Cicadas in his neighborhood in Newton. So naturally I headed to Newton, Mass. to investigate.

One of the places I stopped was Charles River Reservation. First off let me say that the Reservation area smelled really bad. I don't know if it was due to the rains yesterday or what but the soil was soft and smelled like decaying vegitation which gives off a sulferous methane smell. Was not pleasant.

However, this first stop did yield a male Tibicen canicularis which looked like it had a hard time molting. Its exuvium was black on one side. The blackness is due to an unsuccessful molt where a body part like a wing or a leg gets ripped when the cicada is attempting to emerge.

When I picked up the specimen, and turned it over, it was missing one of its middle legs and also seemed to be very black where the opercula are. Opercula cover the male cicada's tymbals that he uses to make sounds. You can see from the image on the right that this specimen, while still teneral is taking a while to gain its true colors. Look at how light the pronotal collar is. Also check out the two-tone eyes. Partly brown, partly grey. This is no doubt due to the loss of blood.

Kicked Off Campus at Regis College

Ever hear the expression "Do As I Say, Not As I Do"? Well, I shoulda followed my own advice which is never go on private property to search for cicadas. Ok, it was the campus of Regis College but I never knew it was private property. I was looking for other places in the Newton/Wellesley area and drove to the campus. It had nice landscaped grounds with plenty of old well-established trees.

So I was examining the trees (where I found heavy cicada activity in the form of many exuvia) when an older couple pulls up to me in their car and inquire as to what I was doing. The older gentleman in the car seemed to me to be a professor at the college so I immediately told him what I was doing ie; researching cicadas and that I have a web site where I publish my data etc. While he seemed to be generally interested in what I was doing, he intimated that I check with security since it was a "Private Campus". I told him I apologized and that I would check with security right away and asked where it was located. He pointed back to the direction he had just come from.

However, he beat me to security. As I was walking back to my car, I noticed that he turned around and headed back the way he had come. When I pulled up to where he was parked, I could see him already talking to a security guard. When I got out of my car, the security guard was quite rude (and foreign I might add, so take that the way you want to) and really didn't want to hear anything.

Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect 200 Dollars

Basically, the security guard "penalized" me for not checking in with security first. He told me that it was private property and since I didn't check with them that I had to leave. I again apologized and I left.

Naturally when I got back to my car and drove away, I started fuming about what just happened:

I couldn't believe that I got kicked off of a college campus. A place of higher learning no less! I would've figured this place of all places would've at least appreciated that I was doing research and striving to learn something but apparently that didn't matter.
I wonder what the professor-type actually told the Security guard. Even though he seemed interested it was probably all a ploy. If he told the security guard to let me stay I'm sure it wouldn't have been a problem.
I thought the foreign security guard was quite rude and I didn't like the way I was treated. I could say a lot of other things about him but it just wouldn't be politically correct but this guy really pissed me off. Something similar to this happened to me years ago when I flew back from England to Boston arriving via Terminal E, the international terminal. But that would be a whole other story.

Call it what you want, the security guard after all was just doing his job right? I think you wouldn't think so, if you were in my shoes.

08/22/05 - More Survey Work Done in Connecticut on T. chloromera

Today, I drove back to Connecticut from northern Massachusetts to pick up John Cooley and Mike Neckermann to continue our surveys of T. chloromera's northern most range.

Who is John Cooley?

John Cooley is an Associate Professor in Residence at the University of Connecticut at Storrs who has requested to tag along with us.

John lectures and does research at UCONN and the University of Michigan in Cicadidae. Particularly Okanagana rimosa and Okanagana canadensis cicadas. In addition he also studies the Magicicada species and he along with fellow colleague David Marshall have even discovered a fourth species of 13 year Magicicada known as M. neotredicm. It is very similar to M. tredecim except that it has a different calling song and other physical characteristics which makes it a true new species.

I have communicated many times with John through email and it sure was a thrill for me to meet him for the very first time today.

John wanted to see for himself just how extensive T. chloromera is in Connecticut and besides, he's like Mike and I. He absolutely digs cicadas.

Off To North Coventry

We started out first in North Coventry due to a report that I received from David Marshall, a colleague of John's that also works at UCONN. He indicated that he heard several males calling a few days ago so this is the first place we investigated.

Sure enough there were at least two male T. chloromeras calling. Unfortunately, I likened these to just "satellite" males similar to the one T. chloromera I heard calling in my own back yard here in northern Massachusetts several weeks back.

These males in North Coventry were many miles away from the main area populations which are across the Connecticut River on the western side and were probably searching for new grounds. Other than these two males in this area, these two were the only T. chloromeras heard east of the Connecticut River and we only heard them call a few times.

So we headed west towards the Connecticut River and one of our stops was Wethersfield where we heard the huge population in Hartford County and where we caught three specimens two weeks ago. Sure enough the T. chloromeras were still there though it seemed that they weren't as abundant. You can really start to feel that the Cicada season is coming to an end.

We took some recordings and data and John actually showed us a special technique which I have never seen before in order to catch certain species of Tibicen cicadas. Suffice it to say that it did work but on a rather ratty male Tibicen chloromera. So I still think the jury is still out on this one.

We spent the rest of the day going over the data that I recorded from last week just to verify my findings of the towns and areas where I had heard T. chloromera Sure enough the T. chloromera were still there. We even managed to add a few additional towns to our data which is very exciting.

The Next Step

The next and final step for T. chloromera's northern most edge is to determine exactly where the boundary is. While I believe it is in Windsor Locks, exactly where in Windsor locks does it stop? Trying to find the actual border will be difficult.

08/24/05 - Tibicen linnei Calling Song.

My friend Mike Neckermann sent me this short video of some T. linnei calling in Connecticut. It's really amazing how these guys sound like those Spanish Maracas. See if you agree. Click the thumbnail below to launch the 42 second movie. It's an .avi file and should work with Windows Media Player or Apple Quick Time.