Stumbling Upon Miracles

A few days ago, Jim McCormac posted his find of a transforming lyric cicada in West Virginia- an amazing encounter and equally superb photographs by Jim.  I was inspired.  In the comments for Jim's post, filmmaker Opposable Chums queried "how DO you manage to stumble upon these miracles?".  I know how Jim does it- he is constantly looking for these types of very things- and let me tell you, he's not stumbling.

A few weeks ago I was walking out of the Cedar lodge at Batelle Darby Metropark with  Jim after the evening programs.  I'm chatting with him as I walked down the sidewalk and suddenly I realize he wasn't there anymore.  He stopped outside the door, in the twilight hours, and was checking out the hundreds of insects that had been attracted to the porch light.  I completely blew by the light- I wasn't in nature mode.  But Jim was- he is constantly looking for Nature's miracles.

Today, Megan, Weston and I attended the Ohio State Fair and Weston led me to a small miracle.  We targeted a shady area by a little leaf linden to let him out of the stroller and burn some energy.  After a round of chasing daddy around the tree, Weston picked up sticks and was hitting them against the bark of the tree trunk.  

As I was watching him do this, I discovered a shed cicada larval exoskeleton clinging to the tree.  I gave it to Weston, but he didn't recognize it as anything more than a dead leaf.  Soon after he discarded it, I realized that there were several more exoskeletons- and that two freshly hatched cicadas were clinging to the tree right in the middle of the Ohio State Fair. As I nudged the lower of the two, he intently watched as it crawled upwards.  As I scanned around the tree more intently, I found another cicada, this one much younger with its electric green blood coursing through its new body.

I'm constantly surprised by how nature is all encompassing- even in the middle of a city like Columbus.  Today it was Weston that reminded me that if we keep eyes and ears open to the world around us, we just never know what miracles of nature we might stumble into.

Tom

What's Been Eating Our Oak.

While doing research when writing about my cicada images, I read that the underground nymphs munch on tree roots. Many of us have seen the shed exoskeleton of the larval cicada- they aren't hard to find attached to trees. You can even pick the paper thin shell up and put it on other things, including your friend's shirt, for example.

Anyways, I have never seen one of these larvae alive, until last weekend, when I was digging up some lemon scented mint in the yard. As I dug into clay soil with a potato rake and begin ripping out roots, I noticed a tan blog slowly waving its legs, clearly out of its element in the light. It was a LIVE cicada nymph.

Although the nymph's opque eyes make it look dead, it was very much alive, waving its legs up and down slowly but assuredly.

Take a look at the wing buds and those massive front claws.

And it is hard to believe that soon, this creature will climb up a tree, break out of its exoskeleton, and become an aerial tree dweller.

If you liked this, you may enjoy looking at more of my cicada images

Tom

The No-Eyed, "Holy" Cicada

Cicadas are supposed to look like this, complete with no holes and perfect eyes.


However, this past August, I found this poor Cicada (which is not a dog day cicada [Tibicen canicularis] as pictured above, it is perhaps a swamp cicada [Tibicen tibicen], but I'm not positive), whose eyes had been picked out and its thorax had a large, cavernous hole revealing the inside pinkish flesh. What could be more gross than a mortally wounded insect? This guy was still living when I snapped these images, a testament to the survivability of these creatures.










Our yard was loaded with dog day cicadas this year, but I only observed this one swamp cicada. I'm sure Cicada larva feast on the roots of our stately bur oak, and I'm glad that they do. While some may consider them gross, cicadas are great insects to photograph. One, they are big, so you get very nice images even without a dedicated macro lens, and second, they are slow and not apt to fly away once you've captured one. Fore more cicada images, check out Cicada Mania, a site I originally learned about after my first cicada post this summer, to which Cicada Mania linked.

For more animal images, see Misty Dawn's meme Camera Critters.