[Bill Menke’s Journal Entries for the Emergence of the Cicadas]

May 28, 2013. Cicadas! The Seventeen Year Cicadas are back! While taking our morning walk in Tallman Mountain State Park (Sparkill NY), Dallas and I found several trees with newly “hatched” (emerged and molted) individuals, and many now-empty “shells” (nymph exoskeletons). They were mostly in the area of the main parking lot and the track. The North Picnic Area had none.

Maya 29, 2013. I spent some time in the morning photographing cicadas around the campus of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (Palisades NY). Many were molting on the trunk of an oak tree near the Cafeteria.

May 30, 2013. I photographed cicadas in the morning at Tallman Park. Unfortunately, the individual that I focused upon, still in its “shell”, did nothing for the half-hour that I monitored it.

May 31, 2013. Kakiat Count Park (Montebello, NY). Stop 1D of the Summer Intern Fieldtrip. Overlook at Kakiat County Park, Montebello NY. We parked near the bathroom building, crossed the Mahwah River via a footbridge and took the Mountain Trail (blazed in orange) up to an overlook that’s about two-thirds of the way up Cobus Mountain. The Seventeen Year Cicadas (this is one of their swarm years) were humming in the canopy above, and some of their “shells” were still clinging to tree trunks. We could also see the little holes, perhaps a quarter in diameter, from whence they emerged from the ground. The rock here is hornblende granite, not gneiss, though it has been metamorphosed a little. We measured the orientation of the foliation. We could see on the topographic map that this area was somewhat higher than the region with the gneiss, and hypothesized that this elevation difference, too, was due to differential erosion. We also talked about the boundary between the sediments and the gneiss of the Highlands, noting that the sediments dipped in the wrong direction for them to lie conformably on the flanks of the metamorphic rocks. We hypothesized that there was a normal fault and discussed what kind of observations would test it.

June 4, 2013. Dallas and I walked in Tallman Park in the morning, doing our usual North Picnic Area and Pool loops. The cicadas were buzzing up in the canopy, but though I searched, I could not find any newly-emerged individuals on three trunks. I guess their emergence is now over.

June 28, 2013. Dallas a I walked in Tallman Park in the morning, doing the North Picnic Area loop. The song of the cicadas has faded pretty-much completely now. Instead, we are pestered by large biting flies, especially along the bicycle path where it passes the edge of Piermont Marsh. I see some trees with the twig damage characteristic of cicadas in the area of the track. The females cut a slit in the bark of a twig and lay their eggs in it. The leaves then wither and die, turning brown. 0:45.

In the early evening, I photographed cicada-damaged trees along Oak Tree Road in Palisades NY and at Tallman Park. Small patches of brown leaves, on the twigs that the female cicadas cut while laying their eggs, are remarkably evenly scattered around the tree. Not every tree is effected; one tree might be heavily affected, while several nearby are untouched. The cicadas seem to use trees of many different species, but especially maples and oaks. I found many dead and dying cicadas on a sidewalk below a heavily affected tree. Some were intact; others had been partially devoured by predators. Their time on the earth’s surface is over, at least for another seventeen years. 0:30.

This is the third emergence of Brood II cicadas that I have witnessed in the general area of Palisades NY. The one in 1979 was truly remarkable, owing to the extremely large number of individuals. This year’s was very modest. I’m afraid that human development has greatly reduced their habitat, making their strategy of swarming to overwhelm predators by sheer numbers much less effective. Too bad!