As promised, the Magicicada adults are all but gone in most areas. I assume that most that are left are in Long Island or Cape Code.
Compared to last year (Brood XIII), Cicada Mania had 57% fewer unique visitors, which was expected. That said, I had 57% more fun this year, which makes up the difference.
How can you say it’s winding down? Its just heating up around here!
Why is that?
On July 4, my sister and I went to the Frances Crane wildlife sanctuary on Cape Cod to see what was left of the cicadas.
Instead of the overwhelming din we’d heard 2 weeks before, we heard just a few individuals singing. We saw a few tired-looking adults,
mostly females, mostly congregating on a few small wild cherry trees, which we called cicada retirement homes. The trees all
around, especially the oaks, had incredible numbers of oviposition scars, which we had not seen 2 weeks before. Thousands of
branch tips were dead from oviposition damage, but it looked like the trees would be OK.