The Magicicadas of Brood XIX

I didn't hear the phone. Or maybe I heard it and assumed it was my friend Alfred from Liberia who frequently calls at odd hours, ignoring the time difference between there and here. No matter. I missed the call that would certainly have gotten me out of bed at 2:30 in the morning and out of the house, camera in hand, to witness something I had never seen before.

Photo Malik Lee

My youngest son, Malik, was frantically trying to reach me to tell me about something he had never seen before either, the emergence of the Brood XIX cicadas right there in his back yard. He could hardly contain himself but in between the calls, he did have the presence of mind to grab his camera and start shooting. It was exactly what I would have done. Some of his pix are included in this blog along with my own.

The ground was full of the holes they had come out of and little brown cicada nymphs were crawling up every vertical surface they could find; tree trunks, vines, deck posts, chimneys, brick walls, lamp posts, anything that would get them off the ground. There they could shed those confining exoskeletons and free themselves to be those amazing flying, singing, adult red-eyed creatures that we only get to see every thirteen years. These very cicadas had been deep underground all this time, since 1998, feeding on the sap in tree roots, growing into adolescence, and waiting for just the right moment. Now was the time.

Photos: Malik Lee

The shedding of that exoskeleton takes time during which the young adults are soft and vulnerable. It is something best done under cover of darkness to avoid predators and dehydration (or worse) from sunlight. They may look a bit strange, even alien at times, especially up close with spooky bottom lighting. But eventually the whole insect emerges with bright red eyes and very little visible pigment, It looks like a ghostly representation of its future adult self . Mark Doljes has posted an nice time lapse video of the whole process.

Photo: Malik Lee

 I was more excited for Malik than I was for myself because I knew that it would be something he would remember and recount for a long time. For him it would be one of those "Do you remember where you were when . . . ?" moments. I knew he could now count himself among the very few people who had actually witnessed the synchronized emergence of swarms of  those fascinating insects.

It was made all the more special because of the opportunity it gave my grandsons, Julius and Langston (Jules and Yaya). At first there was some fear to overcome. Those were "bugs" after all, and probably meant to be feared, disdained, avoided, or probably killed for daring to exist in the same space as humans. It was special to see it turn into fascination and maybe even respect. I hope this is just the beginning of a special relationship of curiosity and respect between them and the natural world. Cicadas are probably a good start. They don't bite, sting, or carry infectious diseases. Very cool little beasties.

I have always been fascinated by the cast-off shells of the emerging nymphs. They always looked much tougher than they actually are. As a child, I never really connected them to cicadas or any other bug that I knew of. When I found them, I imagined them to be rugged little suits of armor that were durable and somehow useful. Maybe they could decorate something or be used to make jewelry. How about making a slide for one of those bolo ties that I thought were so cool. It was never to be. The little shells were always too light, too thin, and way too fragile to be used for anything that my young mind could conceive. But, never give up. I still pick them up whenever I see them . . . and to this day they remain too light, too thin, and way too fragile. They do have this going for them. The tiny spines on the tips of their legs will cling to almost anything. Perfect temporary adornments to Summer t-shirts.

The cicadas we normally see and hear in this part of the country are called annual cicadas or dog day cicadas. They are the ones that, thanks to my dad, I knew as Grandpa Cricket when I was growing up. It is a story I have told in a previous blog. Some of them emerge and mature every year. They do spend long periods of time underground as nymphs but not as long as the magicicadas and they don't have a synchronous emergence. The males are much larger and their calls are individually loud. The late afternoon chorus is composed of easily distinguishable individuals, each taking his turn in that unmistakable rising and falling call.

Adult Male Dog Day Cicada and Adult Male Brood XIX Magicicada

 The Brood XIX cicadas are different. They come out all together every thirteen years. The males are smaller and not as loud. Their numbers are so great that distinguishing individuals (at least for humans) is difficult. The chorus envelopes the ear with an ocean of cicada love songs that sounds like something from a B-grade Sci Fi movie.  Here is a sample recorded in mid May near the Eno River State Park in Durham.


Here is a version of the same scene with some of the closer cicadas and and other chirpers filtered out. To my ear it is more like what I heard in the park.


While this year's Brood XIX cicadas were a special treat for me, it is still the dog day cicada  that holds that special place in my heart. I count on seeing and hearing them every year, much later in the Summer,  even as they signal the beginning of the end of warm weather and the coming of another dreaded Winter. It was the dog day cicada, Grandpa Cricket,  that first taught me about the complex web of life that we know as nature. Things are never as simple as they seem. There is always more for us to observe, another set of things to be discovered, and another story to be told .

Nevertheless there was something special about the Brood XIX this year. I was aware of the 1998 emergence but I didn't experience it directly. This time, I actually saw some of the brood and I paid close attention to them . I photographed them and recorded their sounds.  I helped to introduce my grandchildren to them and I shared my youngest son's fascination with them. I can think forward to the next time they come. The grandkids will be teenagers, Malik will be in his fifties, and I . . .? Well, . . . thirteen years is a long time!

Grandpa Cricket: Cicadas and Childhood

For me there is a certain melancholy that comes with this time of year. It is triggered mostly by the daily choruses of the male cicadas looking for mates. The adults are nearing the end of their long life cycles, some as long as seventeen years. They are spending the short summer as adult flying creatures, preparing to mate, secure the next generation, and die with the coming of Fall. Those cicada songs portend the end of my beloved Summer and the beginning of the darkness of Fall and Winter. It is the annual cycle that lifts me up and puts me down with every orbit of earth around the sun. Whatever it is for them is one thing. For me, the cicadas sing a song of coming darkness.

My introduction to cicadas came long before I knew what they were and long before I ever saw one. As a little boy I was mesmerized by that sound. I can still remember running around with a jar, catching lightning bugs on late Summer evenings . I recall being focused on the little flashing things that I could see while ignoring the chorus of things that I couldn't see as the daylight faded away. But sometimes the raspy voices would penetrate my consciousness and there they would be! Those invisible, loud singers who started as soloists then built into some kind of mysterious and magnificent choral crescendo of textured sound. Who were they? How big must they be to make so much noise? Where were they? Why couldn't I see them?

My dad supplied the only answer I had for a long time. "Listen," he would say as one of them started up. "It's Grandpa Cricket." That was all the information I had and all the information I needed. My little four-year-old mind took over and constructed Grandpa Cricket out of just the name, the big sound, and an overactive imagination. Grandpa Cricket was huge,  mysterious, formless, and probably had an appetite for little boys who strayed too far from their parents on late Summer evenings. My dad allowed the fantasy. In some way it helped keep me in check. I am sure he was amused to no end but he never let on. As far as I was concerned, Grandpa Cricket was real and at least as big as I imagined. He was real because my dad, the biologist, had told me so. That was good enough.

  Newly Emerged                Mature 

It was years before I ever saw Grandpa Cricket in person. Even as I picked up those strange brown cicada nymph casings, I did not make the connection. I think I must have been twelve or thirteen years old before I learned about the life cycle and associated Grandpa Cricket with those large flying bugs with the clear wings, huge eyes, and greenish frosty looking exoskeletons who were not really crickets after all. I had even handled a few of the mostly dead or dying ones I found lying about during the late Summer.

Nymph Skeleton and Adult Remains

My very first focused encounter with an active cicada turned out to be my most exciting. I was maybe fourteen years old at the time. I heard a cicada calling from a nearby large bush and decided to try to find him. I wanted to get close enough to watch him make that noise. I wanted to be close enough to see every detail of that elusive big bug. So began the dance. I would move toward the sound. The sound would stop. I would freeze in place and wait. The sound would begin again and I would move again, closer and closer. It would stop. So would I. Sometimes I could barely move before it stopped but I was a determined cicada stalker. After what seemed like a lifetime of juvenile stealth, I was close enough for the sound to be almost deafening. But I still could not find the cicada. Something about his sound made it impossible for me to pin down his location, even though I knew I was within a few feet of my quarry.

I may have been having trouble finding the cicada but somebody else had no trouble at all. Something streaked past my head and into my field of view! Wham! My eyes followed it to where it landed and there right before me was Grandpa Cricket! But he had company. That streak was a large wasp, heavy bodied with bold yellow stripes on the abdomen. It had flown right past my head to attack the cicada. The two of them were locked in a struggle that was going to have only one outcome. The wasp stung the cicada who let out one last weakened crackly call then fell silent and motionless. After a short time, the wasp took off carrying the cicada into the air! They vanished as suddenly as the wasp had appeared. The once mighty Grandpa Cricket was gone, carried away by a creature smaller than himself but impressive enough. Grandpa Cricket's magic power over me was gone too, at least most of it. A bit still lives inside that little boy who still lives inside of me.

Grandma Cricket still looks pretty formidable

In the age long before the internet and long before Google, I set out to find out about that flying streak that had taken down the mighty ghost of my childhood. I was not ready for what I found.The flying predator does not kill her prey to eat. In fact she doesn't kill it at all, at least not right away and not directly. She is known as the  cicada killer wasp. As with many such wasps, they sting their prey, not to feed themselves but to feed their as yet unborn young. Cicada killer females are specialized predators. They sting cicadas to paralyze them, not to kill them. They bury the living cicada in a nesting chamber they have dug in the ground. They lay a single egg on the hapless cicada who remains sealed in the chamber until the young wasp larva hatches. The youngster feeds on the cicada throughout his early development until he becomes an overwintering pupa. The following Spring it emerges as an adult and begins the cycle all over again. Adult wasps don't eat cicadas. They are vegans like lots of wasps and seem satisfied with flower nectars alone.

Just recently as I was having one of my frequent walkabouts in the backyard I came upon a cicada in the grasp of a cicada killer. Unbelievable! There it was again. Just what I had been writing about in this blog. Now I could have the perfect photo to go with the rest. I ran for my camera but by the time I got back to the scene the wasp had gone. The cicada was still there, motionless but abandoned. I was so disappointed but not surprised. Sometimes the wasps  will abandon prey if it seems too much trouble to get it to the nesting site. I waited at a distance for almost two hours to see if she would return and claim her prize. She never came back. I guess I will have to publish this one without my own picture of one of the stars of the show.

As for the cicada, not to worry. Nothing goes to waste in nature. The ants had already begun to investigate. If they had not come along, a bird certainly would have. It was fresh protein. It was also a fresh opportunity for me. I shooed the ants away and brought the cicada inside for a more formal photo, this time of Grandma Cricket. She is still here. I thought about returning her to the outside to meet her already sealed fate. But then I began to imagine that she might be aware of what is happening. Being eaten by bird might make for a quick and merciful end. Being slowly dismantled by a swarm of tiny ants seems like a pretty horrible way to go. Perhaps neither is as bad as being a long term meal for the offspring of the creature that paralyzed you in the first place. Maybe nature is more merciful than I think. Maybe with the paralysis comes complete unconsciousness. I hope so. In any case, for now she is here, uneaten but not going anywhere.

Female Cicada: Alive but Paralyzed by Cicada Killer Wasp

Many years ago and miles away from here, I had another encounter with the cicada killer wasp. It changed my whole outlook on the insect world. But that story will have to wait for another time. In the meantime, before it is too late in the season, go outside this Summer and listen carefully to that chorus of the cicadas. Imagine yourself to be a little boy who had been told that those voices have a name: Grandpa Cricket. If you listen carefully, you may hear one of them emit a short stutter of a call, one that sounds like it has been interrupted or choked off. Chances are that one has just met a cicada killer (or perhaps a hungry bird).


August 14, 2010 Update:

While Grandma Cricket might have remained alive but paralyzed in the confines of the cicada killer's nest, she did not survive the week here with me. Now I am wondering what keeps them on life support during the period of confinement before they are eaten by the young wasps. In any case, I have sought to immortalize her with one last photo before I release her to the elements.

Panoramic View of Cicada. Click on Image to Enlarge