The first chorus of annual (Dog-Day) cicadas rang through the neighborhood late this morning. Common throughout much of the country, especially east of the Great Plains, these insects, unlike periodic cicadas, do not appear in overwhelming numbers.
Nevertheless, annual cicadas do make their presence known and their loud calls increase through the summer. Having spent a few years underground, nourished by the fluids in a tree root, they emerge only to breed; indeed, adults do not eat during their brief lives though they do provide food for jays, raccoons, opossums and house cats, among other scavengers. Eggs are laid in grooves that the female carves on terminal tree branches; once they hatch, the larvae drop to the ground, burrow into the soil and begin their years underground.
While cicada choruses can become annoying by late summer, their initial, tentative calls are welcome, assuring suburbanites that nature's cycle remains intact despite our careless stewardship of the planet.
