What's all that noise? The 2024 Periodical Cicada Emergence

I recently made a trip to Calera, Alabama to visit my dad and sister. As we always do, dad and I sat on the back porch in the morning shade listening to birds and watching the trees grow, we say. Dad planted three trees in honor of his late brother Larry and father Paul.  Two are hickories and one is a red maple. Within a cramped suburban neighborhood there are traces of forest left in between property lines, enough to support an ample supply of biodiversity and keep my father and I entertained. A tenacious mockingbird came close enough to us that I got a decent photo with my smart phone. Beside the ubiquitous mockingbird we were delighted to hear a migratory summer tanager in the tree canopy on the outskirts of the west side of the lot. This morning though, we were perplexed by a sound we had never heard before. It sounded like a generator. With no power outage in the area we continued to ponder the possibilities and concluded on nothing. We let it go. The morning passed and I was on to my next stop of the day. 

I drove to Talladega where my mom and stepdad have a house on Lake Logan Martin. I had planned this day to be a long journey from my home on the north end of the Bankhead National Forest to Calera to visit my sister and dad then on to Talladega to visit my mom and stepdad. The goal was to be home by dark. After a brief visit in the house we decided to go down to the gazebo by the dock to sit and enjoy the warm breeze wafting from the lake. Then I heard the distant humming noise again, the same noise I heard at dad's house. I asked my mom and she sated my curiosity. Cicadas, she said! I'm usually the nature nerd educating her about the ways of nature. There she was, schooling me about cicadas. 

Fast forward to today. Every year I participate in the annual bird count on the Bankhead National Forest. There are dozens of locations within the forest where data is collected. Species of birds are documented along with weather and other local conditions. The data reveals how birds are responding to forest management practices and possibly informs management decisions on the forest. We kick off the project with a 3 day "birding boot camp". Armed with the bits of knowledge my mother gave me, I understood what I was seeing and hearing in the forest. Cicadas were the back drop for all of the birds we heard and observed to the point I joked "there's that cicada warbler singing again". Spent cicada shells ornamented blooming milkweed and oak leaf hydrangeas. Swarms of cicadas circled the canopy. I mused to myself, "this is the year of the cicadas we will be talking about in years to come."
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• The cicadas are a superfamily of insects in the order Hemiptera (true bugs). More of the blah blah blah can be found HERE if you are so inclined to go down the rabbit hole. 
• The North American periodical cicada emerge en masse every 13 to 17 years. 
• In 2024, 13 year Brood XIX, which is the largest of all periodical cicada broods, will co-emerge with 17 year Brood XIII
• For the first time since 2015 a 13-year brood will emerge in the same year as a 17-year brood.
• For the first time since 1998 adjacent 13-and 17-year broods will emerge in the same year.
• For the first time since 1803 Brood XIX and XIII will co-emerge.

Check out a distribution map of periodical cicadas HERE. 

​You are welcome! 

Kim Waites is the Wilderness Stewardship Coordinator for Wild Alabama . More about Kim HERE.