by Carl Strang
Prairie cicadas are small, early-season cicadas that I first met on July 4 of last year at Woodworth Prairie in Cook County. Soon after that I found them at West Chicago Prairie and Belmont Prairie in DuPage County. Researchers at Woodworth have documenting them as emerging during a relatively brief period, mid-June to mid-July. This year I have been making weekly checks at West Chicago Prairie, and they did not appear until last Sunday, July 6.
This one sang from a bush clover stalk.
That opened the door to seeking them on other sites, and I have been to two of them so far. I failed to find prairie cicadas at Horlock Hill Prairie in Kane County and at Wolf Road Prairie in Cook County. That spoils my working hypothesis that they would prove to be indicators of prairie remnants.
Here’s another West Chicago Prairie cicada, singing from a dead stem.
I hope to squeeze in a few more site checks in the next couple of weeks, but already I have the sense that this species is very limited in the locations where it occurs. I’ll also hope to get a sense of how long they are out at a given site. The July 6 appearance seems late, but this has been an odd year phenologically. So far the 11 species of singing insects have ranged from the earliest starting date in my record to nearly the latest, and the median is right in the middle. That is a little surprising given the severity and length of the winter, but first flower dates (which I hope to analyze soon) have been equally all over the place.
Nature Inquiries 