Eye Hope You Have A Nice Sunday

 Rise and shine humans!

It’s gonna be another hot 🥵 and humid day.

All Eyes On Me

This cicada was keeping a close eye, two bulgy eyes at that, on my mail delivery technic -

The dude hung onto the mailbox door securely and remained stoic when I carefully opened and closed the door. Perhaps, thinking I hadn't noticed it.

Clearly I passed with a buzz...

I Named Him Joey...

How you doin?!

Cicada Ecdysis In The Flesh!

I came across this Cicada while in the midst of it's molting process or Cicada Ecdysis!

Rather amazing to watch and very Jurassic Park like.  I suspect the faint of heart would disagree but whadda they know...

I moved the dude to a Gerber Daisy leaf.  Thought it would be safer than on the walkway.  I was hoping to watch as it's wings expanded but the process can take some time.  The plan was to periodically check back in to see how the process was going but I got sidetracked and when I finally checked back in the dude was long gone.

Fairly certain this dude is one of the many I hear each night, ah summer nights!!

Hello World!

I spied this newly hatched cicada affixed to the front of the chicken coop yesterday morning.

This dude picked a risky location to transform, just out of the reach of the chickens.

Let The Noise Begin!

I've noticed that it's been unusually quite come night time lately.

Usually there's all kind of insects singing and talking but not so much this year.  However, I suspect this is going to change pretty soon!

The following photos show that the Cicadas are starting to make an appearance:  the first two are the casings left behind after emerging from the ground.  The second is what emerges...

Cicada Nymphal Instar

Spied and caught a cicada instar the other night when feeding and putting the animals to bed for the night.  You, or at least me anyway, seldom come across the cicada's at this stage in their life, as they're not in it for very long.  I typically find the abandoned exoskeletal remains hanging all over.

It didn't take this dude long to molt into it's final stage, adulthood.  It was less than a couple hours from catching and placing it in a bug container when we noticed it molted.  It's wings were a neon greenish color and still crinkled up.

In the morning it was done, as seen in the above photo, and ready to be released.  Fortunately, it hung around for Emilie to snap a couple pic then, zooooom, off it flew into a nearby treetop.

Abuzz Over Cicadas

It's a first for me - I came across a live Cicada nymph yesterday evening (pictured to the far left)! I'm guessing that this dude had just emerged from it's LONG stay underground.

I often come across the exoskeleton remains, some of them in the weirdest places too (pictured center). The one above was hanging on a post I have out besides our chicken pen. It's been hanging there for weeks now but I removed for this photo shot.

The adult Cicada (pictured to the far right), which is dead, was lying in our driveway yesterday afternoon.

We caged up the nymph and provided some branches for it to climb on and secure itself to before transforming. Low and behold in less then 2 hours the dude was busting out of it's shell with the transformation process well underway - SO cool! It's now a lovely, fully formed adult cicada. I'm hoping it's a male so we can experience the cicada song up close and personal. We'll give it a couple days and then let it loose to complete it's LONG odyssey.