On 05/29/2004 12:52 PM, Bob S. said:
In the Spring the media played up the coming swarm of cicadas(17 year
locusts), particularly in the Ohio River basin of the USA. Has the
hatch been as bad as predicted? Have they caused any damage to your
gardens or to any pets from eating them? Or was the media hype a
bust?

I live in central New Jersey and they are here. I don't think there
is any damage or danger to worry about.

One thing I notice is their populations are very localized. I live
in a wooded area, and there are enough around me to give the woods a
strange, eerie sci-fi sort of feeling because of the sound they
make. But it's not at all what I expected from the media hype.

Then I was out bicycling on Saturday, and in a big 50 mile loop, I
heard the bugs here and there, but I only found one area where the
cicadas where really out in force. But wow was it impressive! At
the edges where the woods met farm fields, you could see thousands
of them flying around. And the sound was really amazing - very
loud, very strange, and almost constant for a 4 to 5 mile stretch of
road I was on. The individual bugs can sound like a small gas
engine (that has something wrong with it). The chorus of thousands
of them together is really hard to describe, but it would be a good
soundtrack to a horror movie. ;-)

Here's a photo and a recording of the sound:
http://www.joekaz.net/photos/wildlif.../cicada_3.html


--
Joe
http://www.joekaz.net/
http://www.cafeshops.com/joekaz