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Brood XIII Magicicada

Brood XIII News Update, 5/10/2007

Plenty of pictures of cicadas in their nymph instar, but no adults yet. Waiting for photos…

Cicada recipe 1 courtesy of Kirk Moore. Get your kitchens ready!!! It’s almost cicada cookin’ time. (the idea of cooking cicadas makes me ill)

They’re heeere … : Area prepares for the return of cicadas. Note: the photo of the cicada is not a Magicicada, it’s a Tibicen.

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Brood XIII Magicicada

Emergence Report

So far we have Bull Valley, a possible in Lake Bluff, and Highland Park

If you see cicadas don’t forget to take photos. Put them up on Flickr, the free photo sharing service, and use the broodxiii tag so others can find your Brood XIII cicadas. If you can, take a picture of a cicada with a newspaper or print out this web page and take a picture of the cicadas with that (for date reference).

Don’t forget to take video too, and put that video up on YouTube!

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Brood XIII Magicicada

It’s on: Highland Park, IL

Earlier than expected, here’s some pictures of emerging cicadas in Highland Park, IL.

May 22nd is the date they were predicted to emerge, but thanks to warm weather and other factors…

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Arts & Crafts Brood XIII Magicicada

Color a Magicicada

Somebody asked for a picture of a cicada they can color with Crayons. Here you go: Magicicada Coloring Sheet PDF. You need the Adobe Acrobat Reader to view it on Windows, and Macs will display it without an extra plug-in.

Here’s what it looks like when you print it out:

Cicada Coloring PDF

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Brood XIII

May 22nd

According to the cicada emergence formula, it looks like May 22nd might be the date.

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Flagging Ovipositing

Protecting your (weak) trees from cicada egg laying. Use netting, not copperhead snakes

Update (5/4/2024) Here is a link to a video on Twitter/X from the Chicago Botanical Gardens featuring the Garden’s plant healthcare supervisor, Tom Tiddens. He shows us how to net a tree to protect it from cicada egg laying.

As you may have heard, cicadas can damage trees, particularly young or ornamental trees, as they oviposit their eggs in branches. The damage to individual branches is often permanent, and in some cases the entire plant is lost. Native species of trees, like oak and maples, fare much better against cicadas because they have co-evolved for hundreds of centuries. Young trees and weaker non-native ornamentals, imported from outside the United States, fare a lot worse.

Female cicadas use their ovipositor to carve egg nests (egg grooves, punctures, baby cicada cribs) into the bark of tree branches:
Ovipositor

Here is an illustration of the egg nests (baby cicada cribs):
Egg Nests

Mature trees will receive some damage, but they recover. When branches are damaged they die and their leaves turn brown, which is called flagging:
Brood II 2013 Periodical Cicada Flagging

Periodical Cicada Flagging

Check out these articles on Flagging:

Netting and tree protection tips:

  • Do nothing. Allow the cicadas to do what cicadas do, and let them prune the weakest branches of your trees.
  • Use netting to protect tree branches. If you start looking now, you can probably find some at a local garden supply store or online from a store like Amazon. Here is a link to a video on Twitter/X
  • Delay plantings until July.
  • Pick them off by hand like they do in the grape farms of Italy.
  • Spray them off with a garden hose.
  • Foil around the trunk (to keep them from crawling up).
  • Insect barrier tape.
  • Consult with your local tree care expert. Find a local arborist or fancy tree expert, and ask their advice.
  • Bagpipes (no joke, it worked at my friend’s wedding, at least temporarily).
  • Do not use pesticides. It isn’t worth it. Bee populations are in bad shape so we don’t want to do any collateral damage to other species. After 28 years of running this web site, I’ve heard a few stories about family pets dying after consuming pesticide covered cicadas or grass. Don’t do it!
  • Do not surround your trees with a ring of copperhead snakes. By now you have heard that copperhead snakes enjoy eating cicadas at night (although in the photos I’ve seen, they prefer larger species like Megatibicen auletes/grossus.). Gathering a dozen or so copperhead snakes can be time consuming and expensive and they are just as likely to bite you as they are to eat cicadas. Raccoons, bears, coyotes, foxes, and squirrels will also eat cicadas, but I also do not recommend enlisting their assistance. This last one was a joke.

Netting can be effective for keeping cicadas off branches, or on branches, as in the case of this video below where cicada researcher John Cooley had collected many cicadas and wanted to keep them for later. This video is proof that they cannot get through netting:

In my personal experience, which includes two Brood II emergence in my yard, I have seen plenty of flagging, but no death of a tree or shrub. That said, I do not have many small or ornamental trees. I have a 15′ dogwood, azaleas and rhododendrons.

Case study from 2021-2023:

Here’s a small (less than 10 feet) tree that experienced a lot of flagging during Brood X in 2021:
Another small tree with flagging

Here is the same tree in May of 2023:
Princeton Tree

The tree can be found at the Princeton Battlefield Monument park, and if can be seen on Google maps.

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Brood XIII

Soil Temperature

Spectrum Technologies is monitoring the soil temperature in Plainfield and Naperville Illinois.

In northern Illinois and surrounding areas, three species of Magicicada emerge from the soil every 17 years for a brief above-ground visit. Brood XIII will emerge when soil temperature reaches approximately 65° F. Spectrum data loggers are busy tracking soil temperature near Spectrum headquarters in northern Illinois to estimate when to expect their arrival.

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Brood XIII Magicicada

The first Brood XIII sighting (sort of)

Rene reported ]that she saw Magicicada nymphs in holes in a friend’s garden in SE Elmhurst Illinois.

We’re currently expecting the emergence to start on May 24th, but the hot weekend might have roused the cicadas to an early start. We’ll see.

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Magicicada Samuel Orr

Return of the Cicadas

The Return of the Cicadas 17-Year cicada documentary will be airing on PBS in the Brood XIII emergence area soon. As soon as next Thursday, 4/26. Set your Tivo/DVR to record it!

Periodical cicadas are among the most unique creatures in the animal kingdom. After spending 17 years underground as juveniles, they emerge for a brief, cacophonous population explosion aboveground, where they transform into adults, mate, lay eggs and die off after only a few weeks.

WFYI presents Return of the Cicadas, an original local documentary produced in association with the Indiana University Research and Teaching Preserve. Producer Samuel Orr followed the life cycle of Brood X, which made its momentous ascension in the spring of 2004. It accounted for one of the largest insect outbreaks on Earth. Many different broods exist, on unique 17-year schedules. Brood XIII is due to arrive in northern Indiana this May.

Through stunning close-up video and time-lapse photography, Orr and others offer an amazing glimpse at the lives of these enigmatic insects. The documentary was made possible by the research of IU biologist Keith Clay through grants provided by the National Science Foundation. The NSF and Science Magazine recognized the production with a national award for a short 5-minute film on the Brood X outbreak.

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Thailand

Cicadas from Chang Mai Thailand

insects from the forests of Chiang Mai is an excellent website featuring many photos and audio recordings of cicadas from Thailand. If you want to explore cicadas around the world, it’s a great place to start.

Salvazana imperialis appropriated from thaibugs.com