On the final trek out for Sumner’s pre-bedtime business last Sunday night, when I was going to grab the recycling cart to roll to the curb, a slice of nature’s life cycle stayed my hand.
Under the bin’s rim was an adult cicada easing his way out of the nymph exoskeleton. As best I could with as steady a hand as could be managed, I captured stages of this progression revealed in this perfect moment.
These fascinating residents I share this property with were the topic of a recent blog post, of course, but I'm not done talking about them. I’ll punctuate this blog post with those more recent images while I once again drone on at great length about my happy obsession with cicadas.
As to this specific chronicle, the cicada was mostly but not completely emerged from the nymph exoskeleton.
Its wings were still shriveled and almost like the small side fins of a fish.
As I watched and photographed, it pulled its hind end (tergiter? ovipositor? excretory ducts?) from the shell of its former self and stretched that tapered end of its abdomen.
As one who loves and relishes summer, it also makes me love summer’s singing cicada soundtrack. As a downtown dweller surrounded by pavement and bustle, the glimpses of wildlife that catch my eye are amplified and, perhaps, glorified, and I get a little giddy about what otherwise is commonplace and unremarkable.
But one might argue that to be incurious is also to be unserious. I do not hanker to become entomologically expert, and I’ll risk the dangers of gaining small knowledge marred by greater gaps.
In short order, this adult cicada was sporting more fully-formed wings, striking in their architecture and veined finery.
The hemolymph coursed its way to bring structure and utility so that they might be not only eerie and glorious but functional as well.
I also spotted at least one nymph, seemingly in search of his purchased perch to secure the exoskeleton so that the adult within might emerge.
Along the rear property wall, where I allow the accumulation of outdoor materials and tools and such to become an entrenched eyesore, something had really caught Sumner’s nighttime attentions a few days earlier.
What I’ve since pieced together, slowly, is that he had sniffed out and spotted the emergence of those nymphs, pushing up from amongst those tree roots, and heading off for their molting perches nearby.
And last Monday morning, that adult cicada I had watched emerge from his nymph exoskeleton remained next to the exuvium:
As the morning wore on, I found another brand-new adult, resting on the sidewall of a truck tire and preparing for his remaining short existence in the glorious pursuit of copulatory grandeur.
And on Friday afternoon, I saw evidence that another cohort of nymphs must've emerged near the back wall because suddenly an unused bike rack was covered with their shed exoskeletons, in surprising number:
The night after this drafted blog entry was published, I chanced to spy yet another nighttime nymph moving slowly across the driveway, so I bent down to grab the following photo.
The morning after this was published, I was happy to find 12 exoskeletons...a sign of another huge night of adulthood emergence for more of my homegrown brood. The entire collection over the last week is captured in this cup:
At the same time, I was sad at finding dead and dying adult cicadas on the driveway, as we approached the end of the week, I was still pleased at the mating calls coming from the trees near the house.
In May 2021, a work trip to DC coincided with the emergence of Brood X, when millions of 17-Year Cicadas emerged from their underground domiciles, molted, mated, and then died. Here are a few pictures I captured then:
Ten years before that, I was in Battiest, Oklahoma, for another summer emergence, at a time when the ear-splitting cacophony of male maters was the grandest I’ve ever been present for. Piles of nymph exoskeletons littered the yard.
There was even a doubled-exoskeleton rarity.
I’ve noted the relative quiet here in Winston-Salem this summer—many evenings have remained all too songless—but I’ll appreciate the compensation found in getting a closer and finer eyewitness experience of the life cycle in action.
Update on 29 August 2023
Grey, overcast, with more showers and possible storms on the horizon, the dawn emerged more slowly the final Tuesday of August, and it was dim on the driveway. Just before 8 am, and extending for just over an hour, I got to witness the full cycle of emergence for an adult cicada. I spotted a nymph, perhaps not long after he'd dug in his heels on the side of the city sanitation cart; that's when I started photographing with my iPhone. Here is the succession of those shots.
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