In certain parts of the country, you know that summer is starting to wind down, and its days are numbered, when you start to hear the constant sound of jar flies. Or are they locusts? Or cicadas? Whatever you call them, if you live in an area where they are common, you know the sound I'm talking about. It's a dry, undulating, constant noise in the background...a buzzing "ree-uh...ree-uh...ree-uh" Multiplied by the thousands, if not millions, and it becomes a white noise-like cacophony of REEE...ree...REE..ree.... Love it or hate it, you can't ignore it. I always enjoyed the sound. My grandmother, however, always said it made her nervous after about a week. She was not a cicada appreciator.
Growing up, my relatives always called them locusts. Many people do, though it's erroneous. A true locust is an insect in the grasshopper family. In fact, there is no taxonomic difference between a locust and a grasshopper. Common usage of the term locust to refer to cicadas is so ingrained in the language that the confusion is set in stone. Part of the confusion, perhaps, is that people commonly associate locusts with a plague...a seasonal onslaught. There are different kinds of cicadas. The most common is the annual cicada, Tibicen chloromera, which emerges every year. Then there is the periodic cicada, or Magicicada, which emerges in broods every 13 or 17 years.
When the Migicicada broods emerge on top of the annual cicada hatching, it can sometimes feel like a plague. And it turns up the volume of August's soundtrack.
Just last week, we were treated by the press to a video clip of Rick Perry addressing a crowd in Iowa, with his booted foot up on a bale of hay. He was waxing about how Ben Bernanke, should he stray inadvertently across the Texas State line, would be greeted in "an ugly way." Call it blessing or curse, but every time I hear a politician speak with a Texas accent, my ears seem to fill up with wax, and his words become unintelligible. What I do remember from that video clip, however, was the sound of cicadas in the background. They were loud. If I possessed the talents of those who worked for years trying to restore the missing 18 minutes from the Richard Nixon tapes, I could isolate the sound of those cicadas, and eliminate the obnoxious twang of Rick Perry, and leave you with a youtube video of him moving his lips, with only the sound of cicadas as the soundtrack. It was, afterall, August in Iowa.
If you live somewhere where you can hear them buzzing outside right now...consider this. As many as it sounds like, it's only the males that are buzzing. The females are just enjoying the serenade in silence.
Whether annual or the 17 year type, all cicadas have a similar life cycle. They live underground, as grubs, emerge in the late Spring and climb the nearest deciduous tree, molt, leaving behind a dried shell, and then mate upon the ends of twigs and limbs. Those twigs and limbs often die, falling to the ground, and when the eggs hatch, the larvae go underground. Rinse and repeat. In the case of annual cicadas, they come up again next Spring. In the case of periodic cicadas, they can remain underground in the larval stage for 13 or 17 years before emerging again.
Unlike locusts, which as I said, are really grasshoppers...and will devour everything they encounter...cicadas do not actually feed upon any leaves when they emerge. In fact, they hardly eat once they've shed their exoskeleton...they are mostly focused upon mating, and live about a month. That's why they make so much noise. An adult male cicada, for it's size, perhaps makes a louder noise than just about any other living thing. It can be heard a quarter mile away, and the bug is only the size of the end digit of your middle finger. I've always found their noise to be sort of drowsy, but to some it is shrill. I guess it depends upon your constitution, as they say.
I never called them by the name jar fly, though I heard some use it. Locust was used almost exclusively by my kin, and I didn't even learn the term cicada until I was probably 20 or so. As to the derivation of the term "jar fly", I'm not sure. There's this:
There are at least two schools of thought as to how the cicada got the local name of "jar fly." One is that when you catch one and hold it in your hand it "jars" or vibrates. The other thought is that the nickname came from the constant singing that might "jar" or unsettle some people's nerves who are not accustomed to hearing it for hours on end. Children used to catch them and play with them at length, holding them in their hands and frightening other younger children especially girls. Another mischievous trick was to convince the smaller ones that the singing was that of a rattlesnake.
Regarding the 17 year cicadas (or 13 yr). This, again, is a source of confusion. Each single emergence of the periodic cicadas is referred to as a "brood." They either live on a 17 year or 13 year life cycle. However...that doesn't mean that you only see them every 17 years or so. Often, in those areas where they are most common, they emerge every 4 years or so. But each generation that comes up from the ground is a separate "brood", and they never have a chance to mate with another brood. They each follow the same life cycle. The periodic cicadas do not mate with the annual cicadas. They are different species.
They emerge in the millions, and that's why their sound is so omnipresent and hard to ignore. They have to emerge in the millions, because they are an important part of the food chain, and their numbers ensure that enough survive to lay eggs for the next generation. Squirrels, snakes, possums, raccoons, birds...they all feast upon cicadas when they emerge. And while you may see damage to a tree that's full of cicadas that you are inclined to attribute to their feeding, it's not actually the case. They don't feed upon foliage, but their egg laying does serve as a natural form of pruning away weakened limbs, which actually prolongs the tree's life. As they emerge from the ground, the holes they leave aerate the soil and allow rainfall to more easily penetrate the tree's rootzone.
So...if you live where the sound outside is currently marked by the constant buzzing of cicadas...pour yourself a cold glass of lemonade, or fix yourself an icy adult beverage, and sit a spell on the porch, in the yard, in the glider or under the tree. It's hot...and probably muggy as well, but that too is AugustEnjoy the sound. It won't last much longer, and summer will soon be over. If you haven't enjoyed it yet, you'd better get busy and do so, because the jar flies are telling you that "these days are numbered."
If you want to learn more about them, here's a good webpage that has some great photos as well:
http://biology.clc.uc.edu/...
Here's another page that has audio clips of the many different subspecies. The cicada I am familiar with , I can tell from the sound, is Tibbecin Linnei:
http://www.insectsingers.com/...
What do you call them, by the way? And do you like the sound, hate it, or just manage a way to block it out and not even hear them?
