I couldn’t let August go by without a nod to my favorite insects, the charming songsters of the summer – the cicadas.
Cicadas have been featured in literature since the time Homer’s Iliad hit the streets, the epic poem written in the 8th century – 750 B.C., as a matter of fact. Cicadas have been depicted in art from as far back as the Chinese Shang Dynasty, approximately 1600-1050 BCE. BCE is the abbreviation for: before common era.
Cicadas represent carefree living in myths and folklore – and that is why I believe so many people have fond childhood memories of cicadas, and that hearing cicadas reminds us of childhood memories of carefree summers, and it’s no myth! Who doesn’t like cicadas, right?!
I’ve written a few blog posts about cicadas; the links are at the end of this post, if you get that far.
You could spend weeks reading about cicadas online, that’s how important they have been throughout history. Google: Cicadas and you’ll see what I mean. Instead of scouring the Internet for information I haven’t already written about, I asked fellow Texas Master Naturalist chapter members to share their fond childhood memories of their cicada summers.
Becky Jones, a contributor to our joint chapter quarterly newsletter, “The Chachalaca,” has a local story somewhat similar to my childhood cicada memories from Kansas. Becky wrote: “I grew up in the Valley when there was limited air conditioning. I could hear the cicadas making their inimitable sound through the screened windows of our home. It was a wonderful crescendo of nature so closely identified with the long, relaxed childhood days of summer. They always seemed to appear as the intense heat began to retreat. What fascinated me most were the body shells they left behind – remnants of another childhood summer that passed.”
Melissa De Pagter offered this playful story that many will relate to: “When I was a child, my family lived in El Paso, but my parents would send me to McAllen to spend summers with my grandmother. Many hot summer afternoons were spent on her porch listening to the drone of the cicadas. To me, if summer had a sound, it would be cicadas.
“I also had a lot of childhood fun with cicadas, although it was one-sided (fun for us, not the cicadas). My cousins and I loved to catch cicadas and then chase each other with them, running around and screaming like mad in the yard until my grandmother came out on the porch and yelled for us to stop.
“Here's a picture of a cicada that I took at Fairy Fest last month, when it landed on River's shirt, and I took this picture.”
Further down in this blog post you will read what it means when a cicada lands on you.
Lisa Adam’s charming story left me a bit misty eyed. Lisa, also a contributor to "The Chachalaca," wrote: “Shrubs, and mesquite, ash, and hackberry trees formed a neat ring around my childhood home. They seemed to enclose us from the withering sun and winds that blasted the pasture and field on either side of our road. Sitting in the yard on late summer afternoons was sitting inside a small concert theater, with bird calls, rustling leaves, and cicadas. First one cicada began tuning up, then another, and then a whole noisy ensemble. They made a wall of sound that heightened the sense of being in a small, protected sanctuary of song and shade. Except perhaps for the call of whitewings, I’ve never encountered another sound that speaks more of “home” to me.”
Kathy Raines, Rio Grande Valley Chapter, Texas Master Naturalist, author of the newspaper series, “Creatures Among Us,” in the “South Padre Parade” and fellow contributor to “The Chachalaca,” wrote: “They're such an integral part of all our lives, aren't they?! That whiiiiiine!
“Last night at Sandra's and Chet's, the cicadas were starting up, and Sandra was enjoying the hum, and I said, ‘I thought you hated that whine!’ And she said, ‘pretty much.’ Oh, yeah, that long steady monotone whine, yeah, but that these cicadas had a nice sound.
“I'd never thought about the different cicada songs! And why not? We differentiate bird songs. But maybe it was the same type of cicadas, but maybe they sing differently at different times of day?!
“When I was eight or nine, living in Lubbock, my sister (the Sandra above) and I used to laugh and play with their husks we'd find on trees, calling them Crispy Critters after what was then a brand-new cereal. Silly girls--we just thought that was hilarious!
“Cicadas are the accompaniment of summer. Entering the grounds of Sabal Palm Sanctuary about this time of year, I've been greeted with such an overwhelming whine, it seemed I heard little else!”
Fun fact: The world’s loudest insects are cicadas. To hear a recording of a giant cicada, check out this web site: https://www.texasento.net/Cicada.htm Then scroll down a bit and read the comments about what others say the cicada sounds like.
There’s more – someone has recorded different cicada sounds – this is a site worth checking out: http://www.insectsingers.com/ -- you can listen to cicada songs from other parts of the world, like Borneo, New Zealand, Japan, India, and points beyond.
Here’s my fond memory from an earlier blog post: Listening to night songs was a wonderful aspect of growing up in Kansas. Prior to the onslaught of air conditioning, old, two-and-a-half-story wooden homes had huge attic fans that pulled a breeze into upper-story bedroom windows -- most nights. Other nights, especially airless nights that followed the shimmering dog days of summer, the breeze was stilled -- but the darkness was not. Those nights, you put your pillow on the windowsill and breathed with the night. The lyrical, soothing noise of cicadas kept many a child company on those oppressively sleepless nights.
Mornings, back when I was a child, were busy with rounding up cicada shells to show mom. It was a rare treat to see a cicada -- that’s when you had to pull mom by the arm to show her your find -- picking up a cicada caused a frenetic buzzing that tickled your hand -- thus eliciting a quick little-girl squeal while quickly tossing the bug out of my grasp. I still do a tiny squeal when I rescue cicadas from my moth sheet at daybreak and toss them to the four winds so they can complete their life mission.
Former chapter member Elizabeth Perdomo, who now lives in South Carolina, loves cicadas, too. I thought a poet who loves cicadas as much as I do might have a poem about them. She has two that she had written during the time she lived in Pharr. Here they are:
Cicadas
By Elizabeth Perdomo
Who are these
bold singers who attach
crusty bits of summer
to the gusty rhythm
of green branches?
Songsters who sway
full voiced upon
late season swells,
transparent instars,
legs & abdominal shells
found well-attached
as each entertainer steals
onto the stage, sharing yet
another size for another
bold song? They once
lived buried, now treasure clues
mark oddly mapped wonders:
the jewel cached hung just above
a dripping birdbath, another
clutched beneath a concrete
garden bench, two clasped
side-by-side on flowering
milkweed stems, they cling,
well secured upon summer
brown sunflower stalks,
performers well prepared,
dressed up stylish
for afternoon’s
antiphonal
chorale.
6 August 2018 – Pharr, Texas
Dog Days
(La Canicula)
By Elizabeth Perdomo
Orion’s
old hunting dog
rises early in the east,
late summer heat promptly
rouses as well, basks upon his
wrinkled hound skin. He slowly circles,
lies back down on a faded front porch
gradually closes just one eye,
scratches haunches,
then sinks deep into doldrums
of buried bones he could
still be chewing.
Distant histories; guard
vast nations & deep dreams
of nocturnal hunting feats where,
while tracking Sirius bright visions,
he rushes onward in Canis major,
rides dim star-chasmed skies,
stalks hot & sultry seasons
all while reciting Homer’s Iliad
verse which stretches out
like long dog day cicada song
raised in scorching reverie,
yet resolved to take
Achilles down
in the ancient
heat of
Troy.
26 August 2015 – Wednesday Afternoon – Pharr, Texas
Fun stuff to know:
There are more than 3,000 species of cicadas, 54 in Texas, 11 of which are in the Rio Grande Valley. I do not know which 11 species are in the Valley; Google doesn’t seem to know either. I have only photographed five species. They are listed below, according to size. Measurements are from head to wing tip. I’d love to know what the other six local cicadas are; if anyone knows, please e-mail me at jjvanm@gmail.com
Thanks to our Webmaster, Joseph Connors, he has answered the quest:
iNat shows 13 species in the LRGV : https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?photos=true&place_id=94019&preferred_place_id=94019&quality_grade=research&subview=map&taxon_id=50190&view=species
Little Mesquite Cicada, Pacarina puella ¾ inches long.
Diceroprocta delicata is sometimes called a scrub cicada. 1 ¼ inches long.
Superb dog-day cicada, Neotibicen superbus. 1 and 5/8 inches long.
Giant cicada, Quesada gigas, the widest ranging cicada in the Western Hemisphere -- and quite possibly, the loudest insect in Texas. The giant cicada’s most northern range is the lower half of Texas and as far south as Argentina. 1 to 2 inches long.
Correction:
Resh Cicada, Megatibicen resh, also called Western dusk-singing cicada. 2 to 2.5 inches long. Although a cicada found in Texas, iNaturalist.org has no listing this far south. Perhaps initially, the parameters of iNaturalist picked up on the orangish coloring and misidentified the photo below, which is correctly identified now as a Diceroprocta delicata.
The common cicadas of Texas (with photos) are listed at this site: https://www.cicadamania.com/cicadas/common-cicadas-of-texas/ Check out the “Shop” box at the top where you can purchase cicada shirts, mugs and more.
“Every summer the cicadas sing the Song of Life in the forest at Quinta Mazatlán,” according to one of their flyers. “The world’s largest and loudest insect lives in the Rio Grande Valley—the Giant Cicada. Cicadas have 5 eyes. Two large compound eyes are used to visually see the world around them. Three small, jewel-like eyes called ocelli are located between the two main eyes. It is believed the ocelli are used to detect light and darkness. Ocelli means little eyes in Latin.”
Cicadas are known for pulsating drones or buzz. Sounds also include courtship calls and squawking sounds when the cicada is handled or disturbed, according to an online “Southern Living” magazine article. I was glad to know about the squawking. I thought it important to know that a cicada’s unhappy voice differs from its song or call.
“The cicada is believed to bring good luck and prosperity.” In China, it’s popular to wear cicada jewelry to attract positive energy and abundance, according to YunBoutique.com /Blog, a link about their cicada merchandise.
“If a cicada lands on you, it represents ancestral wisdom and communicates powerful messages from the spiritual world,” (like if you’re at the Fairy Fest with Melissa and River). The above quote is according to something that seemed to be on TikTok from a publication maybe about using cicadas in witchcraft. I could be wrong, I got kind of lost in the links that linked to other links and so on. I’d never ventured into Tik Tok before, so trust that idea if you will.
Cicadas don’t live long as adults, a few weeks, but while they are here on earth with us, they are worthy of our respect. Once their life work is done, their songs may be silenced but their value to the universe lives on.
“While the sight and sound of so many cicadas may irk people, it's actually beneficial for the ecosystem when these big bugs come out to play,” according to an online article in parade.com/living/cicadas.
"Cicadas provide an enormous energy boost to the food web by serving as food for many animals. Wasps and spiders and robber flies, for example utilize them," Chad L. Cross, a University of Las Vegas professor explained to reporter Jessica Sager, in a March 28, 2024, Parade.com online article. "Birds and mammals eat them, and even aquatic animals like amphibians and fish will eat them if they fall into the water."
“Cicadas are commonly eaten by birds and mammals, as well as bats, wasps, mantises, spiders, and robber flies. In times of mass emergence of (periodical) cicadas, various amphibians, fish, reptiles, mammals, and birds change their foraging habits so as to benefit from the glut,” https://animals.fandom.com/wiki/Cicada
"They are not harmful to you. They don't bite, they don't sting. They can't scratch." There's more good news: cicadas don't eat plants, so they won't harm flowers or the new leaves in your gardens,” according to a Morton Arboretum online article of May 4, 2024.
“In their final act,” according to an online Smithsonian Gardens library publication, “as the bodies of dead cicadas begin to decompose, they add a boost of nutrients to the soil, which stimulates seed and nitrogen production in plants.”
As the hot, humid dog days of summer slide into September, we can rest assured that male cicadas are entertaining us with their ancient tunes, but also, singing their songs to woo a mate and ensure the continuation of their unique summer symphonies for all time.
Previously written Anita’s Blog cicada articles are at the following links:
July 21, 2019, Anita’s Blog – Superb Dog-Days https://rgvctmn.org/blog/anitas-blog-superb-dog-days/
July 16, 2020 Anita’s Blog – Siren Song of Summer https://rgvctmn.org/blog/anitas-blog-siren-song-of-summer/
July 31, 2021, Anita’s Blog – It’s a What Kind of Wasp? https://rgvctmn.org/blog/anitas-blog-its-a-what-kind-of-wasp/
September 14, 2021 Anita’s Blog – Cicadas Sing; Dragons Fly https://rgvctmn.org/blog/anitas-blog-cicadas-sing-dragons-fly/
July 20, 2023, A compilation of the above articles, the first cicada story after I transferred to the South Texas Border Chapter Texas Master Naturalist in October 2021. https://www.stbctmn.org/post/anita-s-blog-dog-days-of-summer
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