Jonesy
By Journalist Jay
This Indigo Bunting was photographed in a field of sunflowers by photographer Maguerite Eichelberger.
Right now, in late summer, there is one small bird that is very actively reproducing: the Indigo Bunting. The Indigo Bunting is a small, seed- and insect-eating bird in the cardinal family. This bird is highly migratory and is one of the last birds to arrive in the spring, but it stays through late summer before heading back south for the winter. Often these birds will visit thistle feeders when arriving for the summer.
As its name implies, the male Indigo Bunting is a brilliant blue color from head to tail, sometimes appearing cobalt, sometimes turquoise, sometimes almost black depending on the light. The surprising truth is that the bird has no blue pigment in its feathers.
Like the blue of the sky, their color is produced by microscopic structures deep within each feather barbule that bend and scatter light. Females are a completely different story. They are a warm brown, modestly streaked, and easy to overlook. This difference makes sense in the bird world. A male benefits from being visible as he sings and defends a territory. A female benefits from being hidden, especially when she is sitting on eggs or tending young in a nest tucked low in dense vegetation. I have seen them nest in corn stalks as the stalks get tall enough. In many ways, the quiet brown female is the reason the species succeeds, even if the blue male gets most of the attention.’
Indigo Buntings favor forest edges. They are birds of brushy fields, overgrown pastures, woodland borders, power line cuts, roadside thickets, old railroad trails and abandoned farms where shrubs are reclaiming the ground.
The male Indigo Bunting sings a bright, bouncy, high-pitched warble. Their notes typically come in paired phrases, sounding like “what what, here here, right here, see me, right here right here,” repeating in a few seconds. Males sing often from perches in tall trees, up to 200 times per hour at dawn. Most often you will hear them long before you see them. Studies by a teacher in Niles identified how the songs come to be for the males. In the field, most first-year males in the first spring season copy the song of a neighboring territorial male, not necessarily the male parent. Many first year males switch songs repeatedly through the season, changing songs when they move from one neighborhood to another, each time matching the new neighboring territorial male. Many older males also switch from one local song theme to another, mainly in a year when no neighbors match their own song. A few males will copy the songs of two neighbors, and they remain bilingual in later years or they drop the song that is not shared by any neighbor. In some cases a whole neighborhood has a full arrangement of songs different than anywhere else. If you walk down a lane, you may be able to identify the transitions from one set of songs to another.
And this is the world according to Jonesy, who is looking forward to warm apple pie with vanilla ice cream as our farmers begin harvesting them for the stores and their roadside stands.
Cicadas
Cicadas are definitely not locusts, however, in many parts of the United States, people refer to periodical cicadas as locusts. But that’s a misnomer. Cicadas have no connection to locusts, which are actually ravenous grasshoppers. The confusion started with European settlers who had no idea what cicadas were, but they were terrified and confused by these odd flying insects, and called them locusts, probably inspired by biblical plagues of Egypt. Children often collect their shells that are shed as they emerge from the ground and crawl up the tree bark and emerge as adults.
Cicadas spend the vast majority of their lives underground sucking out tree sap from the roots of trees. There are seven different species of periodical cicadas. Three of these are 17-year cicadas and four are 13-year cicadas. And to make the system even more confusing, broods often contain multiple species. There is some academic debate as to how closely related the species are; in some cases they’re so similar that the only apparent difference is whether they’re on a 13- or 17-year cycle.
A brood of cicadas contains billions of insects that have synchronized life cycles. They’re born at the same time, emerge at the same time, and die at roughly the same time. There are 15 broods known to exist at this time, defined by the year and geographic territory where they emerge.
This may also be the reason that periodical cicadas are found only in the eastern United States—the treeless expanse of the Great Plains provides a very effective environmental barrier to these tree-loving critters.
Almost every year, some parts of the United States sees a cicada invasion. You can tell if you have a periodic cicada as it’s in their eyes. Most periodical cicadas have bright red eyes of a nearly demonic hue, but a few have striking variations. Blue and white eyes make up a small percentage of the population, but there are just so many cicadas that it’s not uncommon to spot one among the millions swarming outside. If you see green- or black-eyed cicadas, you’ve spotted the annual variety—they belong to an entirely different genus. They are larger than the periodical cicadas and appear later in the summer. These are the ones we experience in our neighborhoods.
Only male cicadas make noise. These bugs have organs called tymbals on both sides of their abdomen; they contract and relax the tymbals rapidly to generate the characteristic clicking buzz, which is amplified by their mostly hollow abdomen. The males sing in concert, all trying to win over their silent female audience. Cicadas won’t hurt your flowers, but they might hurt very young trees. Damage occurs when the female cicada lays her eggs inside the bark. This doesn’t harm mature trees, but it can severely damage or kill young saplings. To protect your newly planted greenery, cover them with a light fabric such as cheesecloth until the cicadas die. Older trees can not only withstand cicadas, they also record the cicada emergence in their tree rings as the wood forms a permanent record. It is possible to detect a periodicity in the annual tree rings corresponding to the 13- or 17-year cicadas.”
Cicadas won’t hurt you—at least not too much. They can pinch, a sensation often mistaken for a bite. They have little spines on their legs so they can land on the side of a tree. This may hurt a little, but cicadas have no stinger or other defense mechanism. And they certainly won’t bite, because adult cicadas don’t have the mouthparts to bite. If a cicada does land on you, don’t panic–they willl land on any surface.
Cicadas make a tasty treat; other animals know it; and they love to devour these bugs. Basically
all wildlife just stops what they’re doing and gorges themselves on cicadas meals. Some of us humans have roasted them, but this is not a widespread practice.
