Cicada Curious? Here’s the scoop on the coming brood

Mass gath­er­ings are tak­ing place all over these days, and Winchester will be at the epi­cen­ter of a big one in just a few weeks as throngs of hor­mon­al 17-year-olds begin lit­er­al­ly climb­ing the walls (and tree trunks) of Clark County.

This year’s emer­gence of peri­od­i­cal cica­da Brood XIV is expect­ed to be a high-deci­bel spec­ta­cle the likes of which hasn’t been seen—or heard—in these parts since 2008.

If you don’t remem­ber the 2008 emer­gence, here’s a quick recap of how it went down at my house: It was late May, our sec­ond spring in Winchester, and the first time in our mar­ried life that we lived in a neigh­bor­hood with mature trees. Jeff and I were thrilled to have land­ed in such an arbo­re­al set­ting. In addi­tion to two big ash trees and a lit­tle dog­wood out front, we had a decent-sized red­bud and a cou­ple of maples in our side yards. Behind the pri­va­cy fence out back, a majes­tic sweet gum ruled the sky.

A typ­i­cal morn­ing involved one of us get­ting the news­pa­per from the dri­ve­way while the oth­er took a show­er. I don’t recall who did the hon­ors that par­tic­u­lar morn­ing, but what I do remem­ber is stand­ing gob­s­macked in the front yard with Jeff, star­ing at the fur­rowed trunk of our old ash tree. The entire length of it was sur­re­al­ly alive, crawl­ing with molt­ing cicadas. Thumb-sized and ghost­ly white with dark mark­ings behind red eyes, some had com­plet­ed their molt, oth­ers were in the mid­dle of it, burst­ing out of their skins like movie direc­tor Ridley Scott’s famous alien.

The fol­low­ing weeks were loud—we heard the cicadas more than we saw them—but even­tu­al­ly the din died down. When it was final­ly over, all that remained were life­less piles of split brown husks  . . . and the invis­i­ble next gen­er­a­tion bur­row­ing deep underground.

Experts are pre­dict­ing this year’s emer­gence to be equal­ly impres­sive, so much so that Gene Kritsky, a pro­fes­sor at Cincinnati’s Mount St. Joseph University, has writ­ten a book about it (The Pilgrims’ Promise: The 2025 Emergence of Periodical Cicada Brood XIV), and University of Kentucky ento­mol­o­gist Jonathan Larson has dubbed it the “Bourbon Brood.”

Here’s what to expect in the com­ing weeks: Sometime in May, pos­si­bly around the time beard­ed iris blooms, the first of this year’s Brood XIV will exit the soil in which they’ve been liv­ing since 2008. Telltale round holes will mark their por­tals. They’ll scale the near­est ver­ti­cal sur­face and molt into adult­hood. By the time we notice them, they’ll have maybe 4–6 weeks left to live—if they’re lucky. All kinds of crit­ters (includ­ing culi­nar­i­ly adven­tur­ous humans) eat cicadas, so many of the first arrivals will not sur­vive long enough to com­plete their buck­et lists. Those who do will be in a mad scram­ble to make babies before they die. This is where the hordes and rack­et come in, because when time is short, long engage­ments are not an option.

Lusty males will gath­er quick­ly to broad­cast their availability—sometimes at vol­umes in the 90-deci­bel range (think your aver­age gas-pow­ered lawn mower)—by acti­vat­ing mem­branes called tym­bals on the sides of their bod­ies. Receptive females will respond with rel­a­tive­ly soft click­ing sounds, and when the deed is done, take off in search of soft wood—usually young tree branches—into which they can deposit their eggs. Six to 10 weeks lat­er, the eggs will hatch, and the nymphs will tun­nel under­ground. They’ll live in dark­ness and feed on plant root sap until the spring of 2042, when it’s their time, at last, to rise up and ful­fill their destinies.

So there you have it: a brief primer on peri­od­i­cal cica­da Brood XIV. If you’d like to learn more, there are lots of great online resources, includ­ing Dr. Kritsky’s free app, Cicada Safari, on which you can help sci­en­tists map this year’s brood by upload­ing your own pho­tos and sound record­ings of Clark County cicadas. The app is sup­port­ed by his fan­tas­tic web­site, cicadasafari.org, which fea­tures loads of infor­ma­tion, pho­tos, and fun activ­i­ties, as well as links to oth­er cica­da-cen­tric sites.

I’m well aware that not every­one shares my enthu­si­asm for cicadas, but there’s a lot to like about these amaz­ing crea­tures. Consider the fol­low­ing, gleaned from Dr. Kritsky’s Cicada Safari website:

• Brood XIV comes around just 4–5 times in a life­time and is only found in north­east­ern North America. It was first doc­u­ment­ed in 1634 at Plymouth Harbor, although experts believe it exist­ed for cen­turies before then. It’s a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent species from the annu­al “dog day” cicadas we see every July.
• There are two cat­e­gories of peri­od­i­cal cicadas: the 13-year cica­da and the 17-year cica­da. All peri­od­i­cal cicadas are of the genus Magicicada. They live most of their lives under­ground and “count” the annu­al ebb and flow of plant sap to know when it’s time to emerge. Sometimes indi­vid­u­als mis­count and sur­face a year or more ear­li­er or lat­er than their brood.
• Contrary to pop­u­lar belief, cicadas are not crop-dec­i­mat­ing “locusts”—those are grasshop­pers —but their egg-lay­ing behav­iors can dam­age young trees, caus­ing a con­di­tion called flag­ging. If you have such trees and want to pro­tect them, experts rec­om­mend cov­er­ing them with fine-gauge net­ting or cloth rather than using pes­ti­cides, since cicadas are more ben­e­fi­cial than harm­ful. They don’t bite or sting, and they’re not poi­so­nous. Their bur­row­ing aer­ates our lawns, and their low-fat, pro­tein-rich bod­ies nour­ish their many predators—and feed the soil.
• There are two ways to pro­nounce cica­da: suh-kay-duh is more com­mon in America, but the Brits say suh-kaa-duh. Either is correct.

So, what do you say? I say let’s cel­e­brate this year’s Brood XIV by giv­ing it the admi­ra­tion and respect it deserves. Let’s acknowl­edge its rareness, appre­ci­ate its music, and thank it for bring­ing a few weeks of wonder—and buzz—to Winchester.

More photos (click to enlarge/view gallery)