Cicada Contest!
The contest is officially over. Here’s most of the winners.
June 9, 2007
Emergence Report for 6/9
This should have been part 2 yesterday:
Locations
- Riverside
- Thornton Lansing Rd in Thornton, IL as well as Lansing, IL in the area of the model airplane field on Stony Island Ave.
- Old School Forest Preserve in Libertyville, IL
News
What Makes Cicadas So Loud? (The Daily Green).
Why so many deformed cicadas? and How to Dispose of Cicadas (The Chicago Gardener).
Do you hear that? Sound of cicadas here to remind us that Mother Nature’s pulling the strings (Sun-times).
Video
Collecting MadVideos — Brood XIII cicadas arrive in Wisconsin.
Cicada video (by Love is the most excellent way). See and hear them!
theVOICE – Cicadas in Oak Brook. “On this episode of theVOICE we head out to the Oak Brook Park District’s Dean residence where the 17-year cicadas have taken over. The property has been undisturbed for over 60 years and has become a perfect nesting place for the cicadas.”
Daily Nightly’s Chicago Cicadas.
Blogs
A handful of cicada photos (by ThreadStory)
More cicada photos (by Superhua)
Great pictures of seagulls swarming a suburb to get at cicadas. Plus, a picture of the coolest Christmas tree ever.
The Cicada are Coming… and coming and coming.
Invasion: Cicada on a Car Tire.
Symphony of cicadas. Now appearing in 60532.
“They’re Alive!” (by Smoldering Embers in a Mohawk Campfire who is, BTW, an excellent speller).
Precious Poodle has Cicada Mania.
Return of the Cicadas. Cool picture!
Cicada Mania typically steers clear of politics, but in the interest of being canonical: Neocons: The Cicadas of Politics .
Photos from the Cicada Mania festival
Here are two photos from the Cicada Mania festival by Roy Troutman:
An orange eyed Magicicada:
3 nymphs crawling up a tree limb:
Gray Eyed Cicada
Here’s a great photo of a gray eyed cicada found in Glenview, IL by Matt Bergquist and photographed by James Planey.
June 8, 2007
Emergence Report for 6/8, part 1
Hacked: yes the site was down part of yesterday because it was hacked. We’re back to normal now. A setback, but, I’m going to post a lot of video and pictures this weekend — I promise.
Locations:
- Full force in Homewood, IL
- Great emergence in Midlothian, IL
- Sublime in La Grange Park, IL
- Westchester is a blast!
- HORRIBLE! in Lombard (that must mean there are LOTS in Lombard)
- Full swing in Highland Park
- “Massive amounts, we’re talking thousands upon thousands in Villa Park”
- “literally trillions in Western Springs Hinsdale La Grange The Morton Arboretum etc”
- HUNDREDS in Glenview
- Lake Forest College in Lake Forest, IL
- Ear piercing in Westmont, Clarenden Hills, Downers Grove, Hinsdale…
- Quite a sight in Goodrich Park in Naperville, IL
- I&M Canal and Rt. 6
- In the woods by the Cal Sag Channel
- Two (2) cicadas at the McBride Raptor Center outside of Iowa City
- Thousands at Rogers Lakewood park in Valparaiso
- Thousands in Roscoe (on the Wisconsin border, north of Rockford)
- 10′s of 1000′s in Glenview Illinois
Video
Google Current show on cicadas.
Blogs
Monster-eyed bugs love to sing. Nice photo.
Report from cicada station 60126. Includes photos.
Another account of the cicadas at the Brookfield Zoo and Ryerson Woods. Note: the emergence at Ryerson was just beginning last weekend.
June 7, 2007
One Red Eye, One Blue Eye
Talk about one in a million: Steve Turner found this Magicicada with one red eye and one blue (sort of like a Husky dog or David Bowie). This is one of the highlights of the emergence so far.
You can click the image for an even larger version:
June 6, 2007
Chicago Trip Wrap Up
Sunday I spent the day at the Ryerson Woods Cicada Mania festival. The Lake County Forest Preserve folks did a fantastic job putting this event together: they had music, fun for kids like face painting and a costume contest, as well as entertaining & informative talks by cicada expert Gene Kritsky. I spent more time filming with the Fuji TV crew, looking for more white eyed cicadas (no luck), and exploring trails. At the very end of my visit I discovered a large emergence of cicadas out by the river between a footbridge and a cabin (I think it was called the Stokes cabin). Around 5:30pm I heard a sound like boiling water; I looked down and thousands of cicada nymphs were crawling from the ground. The experience was sublime. I even found a brown eyed cicada.
A big shout out to everyone I saw wearing one of our t-shirts!
There are more cicada hikes going on at Ryerson this weekend. If you go, I recommend you go to the cabin by the river. This weekend there should be plenty more cicadas to see and hear.
Monday I made it out to the Brookfield Zoo, which is about 25 minutes south of O’Hare. I read that there was a large emergence of cicadas at the zoo and that the animals were feasting on the cicadas — I had to check it out. When I pulled in to the parking lot of the zoo the noise of the cicadas was overwhelming! Kids where screaming “CICADA” and spending more time looking at cicadas than the zebras and bears. Most of the cicadas I saw and heard at the zoo were Magicicada cassini (small with all black abdomens). I don’t remember seeing any animals eating cicadas — maybe they’ve had their fill. The Zoo carousel had two cicadas rides! How cool is that?
This is an example of lousy photo composition. If I was smart, I would have had a zoo animal in the background to prove this was at the zoo:
More video and photos to come... check back often…
No thanks to: Sony, whose Handycam takes so-so video and isn’t compatible with Macs, Best Buy for lying to me when I asked if the Handycam was Mac compatible, Apple, for iMovie which does not support muxed Mpeg 2 video (which is what the Handycam makes), and Cannon, for making a digital camera with a macro setting that essentially turns every photo into a fuzzy blob.
Nothing to do with my trip to Chicago, but here’s a link to www.seventeenyearcicada.com. John’s been posting this URL on the message board about every other day. Maybe if I post in on the homepage, he’ll chill out.
June 2, 2007
Day One the the Lake County Forest Preserve
Today was a great day. I attended Gene Kritsky’s talk at the Lake County Forest Preserve. After 11 years of Cicada Mania, it was great to finally meet Gene and see one of his speeches. I also got to meet Cicada Mania contributor Roy Troutman for the first time, as well as Gerry Bunker who runs the information rich Massachusetts Cicadas website, and Joe Green, who contributes to the Entomology – Cicadidae Yahoo! Group.
I also spent a lot of the day with a film team from Fuji TV, the Japanese ABC affiliate. They’re filming the emergence for Japanese TV. Very cool!
I was able to take a couple good photos, and some video. I hope to upload the video on Tuesday or Wednesday.
