What’s going on in your garden (2025)?

[SandwichShortOfAPicnic]

What Barriehie said - funny thing is, they’re either reviled as a hellacious nuisance, or celebrated as one of Nature’s wonderful weirdies (both MrsT and I love seeing/hearing them).

This time around, we’re on the northern edge of the emerging brood, so as loud as that video I posted a couple of days ago may have seemed, it’s a very small hatching…but they’re still everywhere, it seems.

Further south about 20 miles, and into Cincinnati (another 20 miles), they’re thick. We drove to the Germanfest last weekend, down that way, and it looked like a sea of marbles floating in front of us, there were so many flying about, and the shoulders of the roads are buried in cicada shells (it used to be trendy 120 or so years ago to wear the husks as a fashion accessory!).

Not a great time for motorbiking then!

 

[SandwichShortOfAPicnic]

Cicadas in No. America have two different brooding cycles. One is 13 years and the other is 17 years. That's how often they come out of the ground to mate. Last year here both broods emerged simultaneously; it was noisy!

Periodical cicadas - Wikipedia

That link knows more than I do but I'm living where they are so it's not hard to see/hear them...

An interesting read thankyou!

 

[Barriehie]

An interesting read thankyou!

You're welcome. Did you play the sound? It's like that except deafening loud.

 

[SandwichShortOfAPicnic]

You're welcome. Did you play the sound? It's like that except deafening loud.

I've heard them lots of times and the noise is something overlander travellers complain about all the time for wrecking sleep!

 

[TastyReuben]

I've heard them lots of times and the noise is something overlander travellers complain about all the time for wrecking sleep!

They shut up at night here and are completely quiet. The daytime hours, though…it’s like you’re hearing the world’s largest baby rattle going nonstop. We can even hear them with all the windows closed up tight.

 

[badjak]

Yeah, they are extremely noisy.
We got them here, but first time I heard them was on a trip to Japan. Couldn't hear myself speak

 

[SandwichShortOfAPicnic]

They shut up at night here and are completely quiet. The daytime hours, though…it’s like you’re hearing the world’s largest baby rattle going nonstop. We can even hear them with all the windows closed up tight.

Ah well they are mostly talking about Africa and the complexes they mention are brightly lit which apparently makes a difference

 

[TastyReuben]

Another thing about cicadas - like the picture I posted, they have bright red eyes…until they don’t:

Hamilton, Ohio Journal-News

Less than one in a million have blue eyes, so if you see one, it’s considered extra good luck.

 

[TastyReuben]

I’m sitting out on the front porch now, drinking a beer and listening to the bugs…with apologies to Mr. Stoker - “Listen to them, the children of the day. What music they make!”