But that scar is 2 or 3 inches long, isn't it? More than just a hole in and out. :confused:

I checked...:blush: Here's a cut away of two egg clutches. Now I see how they do so much damage.

They slice a slit, and lay several eggs in a row. The bigger scars might be the work of two or three cicadas on some especially attractive real estate, or maybe cherry just scars really badly. There are smaller scars all over; I just took pictures of the especially bad ones.

[edit]As you say...

That scar has the appearance of one long gash, but it's really multiple holes in a long line, spaced very closely to one another. When the scar is fresh, it's much easier to see the multiple holes. The larvae that come out are tiny. Like just a single mm or so long.

I saw a couple of them after they hatched and dropped down onto the roof of my car. Only reason I was able to see them is that they left a trail in the morning dew. At the end of a foot long dew trail, there was a little squirming speck of a worm.

edit: damn I type slow.

Well, I wouldn't cross any bitch with an ovipositor that can do that.:eek:

Here's a site with some good pictures of the larvae just before and after hatching.
http://www.sdym.com/cicadafear/cicada46edited.jpg

http://www.sdym.com/cicadafear/cicada54edited.jpg

Yeah, that gang could really raise hell with a tender young twig.....good thing they don't hang around the bus station. :worried:

Eeeeauuw.

Alien nightmare flashbacks.

It's not 17 years yet, but a different brood is coming to the Eastern seaboard.

Do you remember the 1996 brood? Because I don't.

I think it's a lot of media hype, like before a storm.

The 2004 brood was absolutely insane. I remember that one like it was yesterday. And the reason I remember it is because I had never seen anything remotely like it up until then.

Do you remember any cicadas from 1996?

I love this thread!

The command center during the oncoming onslaught on the interwebz according to Wired magazine.

2004 (Brood X) is the big one in the DC area. I don't think we'll see too much out of Brood II around here, but maybe someone on the Cellar will.

I think you're right. But the Washington Post, and Post Express both put it on the front page today. Like it's going to be a big deal here. I don't think so.

It's too bad. I like the cicadas. They are neat.

And you guys are on the outside of the locked rooms?

kickstarter

Have you seen any? A FB friend who lives in Springfield VA is complaining about them, but I haven't even seen one yet.

If they come around here, we have a invasion of fbb's * to gobble them up.

*fucking blackbirds - grackles or starlings, I can never tell. But they are loud and have bullied all my beloved sparrows and finches away

Nope; none yet.

Not sure if this will work, the preview isn't working. The vimeo link is: http://player.vimeo.com/video/66688653

Cool video on cicadas.



The latest map I saw shows that we aren't going to get any cicadas here, but if I take a half hour drive, I'll be deep in cicada country.

Gosh, Glatt, that's beautiful.

I'm sorry we aren't getting any of them here. They are very interesting.

Yes, the photography throughout is remarkable.

I learned several things...

* triliums grow in more places than just Oregon !
... (here I thought PDX was so special )

* the eggs are laid up in the tree branches

* the cacophony lasts for just a couple of weeks
... ( in Iowa years ago I could not imagine living with it for very long )

thanks for the video fellas

Apparently a subset of 17-year cicadas come out 4 years early. Four more years 'til the big one, but even this small subset is making a lot of noise in my neighborhood.

https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4243/3...42a222e0_z.jpg

Yeah. It's weird.

Lots of them here too. Is this normal? Or is the weird weather confusing them?

I saw an amazing nature show on PBS last night that had very good footage of the cicada life cycle. I always wondered what those tiny little worms the size of a sesame seed ate for 17 years while they were underground to grow into a full sized cicada. Apparently it's tree sap sucked from the roots of the trees they drop out of when they hatch.

Apparently four years early is the most common deviation from 17.

Low quality audio from my window in this video.

We got nothing here in good ol' south central. Thankfully.

Is that bird real?:eyebrow:

Yeah, it's just lazy.

They are coming back next year, aren't they?

We had to cut down two big trees in our back yard this summer because they were becoming a liability, there was so much rot at the top.



So with them out of the way, we are going to put a new fence up around our backyard, and want to plant a bunch of native plants and trees. Really fix up the back yard. Test the soil first and treat as needed, All that stuff. We're starting to think about it all and make initial plans.

But the cicadas will maybe kill any saplings we plant in the next 9 months, won't they?

Yup, they're back next spring.


If they'll be small enough, you could consider wrapping them in gauze or netting. They're big bugs, so you don't need especially fine netting.

Duh. Why didn't I think of that. That's a great idea!

The murder hornets will sort them out

at the start of the last visitation, we were still relatively new to the US and went on a free community nature walk/smores thing with the sprogs (youngest a baby in a sling).

We learned about smores there. And cicadas -never even heard of them before. And we learned that some people don't think things through properly ....as they told all these young kids about groundhogs and groundhog day and then asked if they'd like to meet one...and brought out a very sad and very, very dead stuffed specimen.....

Then they told us all about how the evil developers were going to build a new high school on all of that land. The high school all the kids eventually went to :o

Is that firewood glatt?

***wait I'm getting old and confused, I forgot we did two of these things. It wasn't a groundhog -that one was on groundhog day, but there was something stuffed that had seen better days and was irrelevant to the theme of the walk. :(

I hope so, but not for me. We don't need that much fire wood for our outside fire pit. It was big 4 truckloads worth. I hope somebody gets use out of it.

Yeah, there's a few thousand dollars worth of firewood in 4 truckloads.

That must be why they charged us much less than I was expecting to spend three days taking that tree down. Only $4500. Another outfit had quoted us $8k.

5 guys for 3 days.

I have no idea where the wood is going, but it would suck if it was going into a landfill.

I’ll tell you this though, I have no concerns about hurricane season for the first time since we bought this place.

They bucked it up what appear to be too thin rounds to make firewood.
From what I saw, you and the neighborhood were lucky to avoid damage and/or injury.