Cicada Journals July 26, 2004
07/26/04 - First Cicada Tenerals Found At St. Patrick Cemetery - Lowell, MA.
10:15 am - It had just removed it's head and was hanging up side down. I've seen this plenty of times in pictures but never in person. The Cicada looked like it was stuck and that it might be dead but that surely wasn't the case.
I looked carefully around the tree and discovered another Cicada newly emerged and hanging from it's exuvium hardening in the sunlight. This one was two feet from the ground on the side of the same tree.
I noticed that the second Cicada, one of the wings was not expanding properly. While these two were molting I decided to walk to another ash tree approximately 30 feet away and discovered two exuvia on this tree as well. No Cicadas in the area however.
I went to yet another ash tree and discovered 22 exuvia either on the tree itself or scattered on the ground around it. I also noticed a pile of dark brown smashed up Cicada nymphs. It sort of looked like something had eaten them then decided that they ate too much and regurgitated them. These were darker brown in color so I am assuming that the cicadas were still inside them when eaten.
I went back to the first ash tree and noticed that the first cicada (the one 8 feet off the ground) completely exits it's shell by giving several abdomen thrusts (almost like sit-ups) and is finally free. The wings start to expand.
I get worried that since it is late morning that these two cicadas would get attacked by the birds in the area so I stayed to watch over them while the molt process was complete. Cicadas are very fragile and delicate creatures at this stage. You don't want to touch them if you can help it. The second Cicada (the one two feet from the ground) still has not expanded it's 2nd wing and may be damaged. I noticed that it is walking very funny.
After about two hours I carefully collect the Cicadas, the good one is a female T. lyricen and the deformed one is a male T. lyricen. I also collect their exuvia for further study and definately notice that the Cicada with it's wing not expanding is actually missing a front fore-leg! How can this be?
Notes: The first top 4 thumbnails are of the female T. lyricen. The remaining are of the deformed male T. lyricen. An in-depth observation and analysis was done on the male Cicada under the Cicada Deformities section on the left.
07/26/05 - Let's Try A New Area - Lowell Cemetery - Lowell, MA.
1:00 pm - Due to the success of finding two Cicadas at 10:00 am in the morning, I still had plenty of time to look around at other places for signs of Cicadas. I decided to go to Lowell Cemetery which is a very old and well established one.
When I got there I noticed that the older trees were actually labeled with the type of tree that they were. Some just had numbers but others were clearly labeled. Could hear tons of Cicadas singing in them. Walked around very briefly. I have been up since 5:00 am and decided to head home and check this place out another day.
07/26/04 - A Scary Night Visit to St. Patrick Cemetery - Lowell, MA.
10:15 pm - Ok, I'm excited about Cicadas. This is my third time out today in hunting for them. Due to my great success in finding two Cicadas on the same tree at this cemetery, I decided to try my luck at finding actual nymphs at night.
First I visited the same maple tree that I discovered the first Tibicen exuvium on the 24th. Then, I went to the ash tree that I discovered the two Cicadas on earlier this day. I didn't find anything on these trees.
Then I decided to try the ash tree that I discovered 22 nymph exuvia on as well as the crunched up nymphs and discovered a nymph slowly working it's way up the tree. I gently grabbed it and stuck it in a mason jar without the lid on.
I decided it was probably best to head home straight away because I didn't want the Cicada to molt in the jar. (This proved to not be a problem which I will discuss later)
I'd had my prize for the evening and went home to watch it molt and take some pictures.
When I got home, I got a huge thick lilac branch from my yard for the nymph to molt on. The nymph walked around it for a while and settled underneath and nothing happened for about 10 minutes.
The thumbnails to the left are a shortened time-sequence of photos I took while watching this nymph molt. If you want to see the imaged sequence from start to finish, check out the Cicada gallery.
This nymph also displayed some unusual behaviors which are noted in the Noted Cicada Behaviors page.
