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Click here to return to our main Periodical Cicada page Cicada Hunt! is
part of the Salt the Sandbox Web.
This page was created on April 1, 2007, and it was last updated on May
17, 2007. |
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Kids' Cicada Hunt! Things to Do During this Year of the CicadasThere are two lists on this page: Things YOU can do if you find an adult cicada. Things our
family plans to do this spring as part of our Cicada Hunt
2007. |
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Periodical Cicada Home Cicada Blog Cicada Hunt 2007 Photo Stories Things to Do This Spring |
This list includes places where you can report your own cicada finds. You can stick a pin in the Interactive
Online Emergence Map. You can report it on Cicada Mania.
Go to the Cicada Mania Message Boards, here: You can tell your story to the Chicago Tribune's Pro-Cicada Garden Blog. The Chicago Gardener is run by Beth Botts: http://featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com/chicago_gardener/2007/05/tell_us_your_ci.html You can take its picture and post it to The Cicada Project. This is a project of the Homer Township Public Library. While the library waits for the real thing, they are being visited by jade cicadas from Hong Kong. http://thecicadaproject.blogspot.com/2007/05/welcome-to-cicada-project.html You can write a poem about it.
If your poem is Haiku, you can enter a contest,
described here: You (or your pet) can eat it.
Cicada Mania has useful information on this topic, too:
Things Our Family Plans to Do This Spring Here's a list of things that the boys and I want to accomplish during this year of the cicadas Earliest Examples. We want to find the earliest examples of everything we can related to periodical cicadas. We want to find the earliest burrow, nymph, and adult, and hear the earliest songs. Go here to check our progress. Talk to the Neighbors. We want to talk to people who have lived in our neighborhood for more than 17 years. They may be able to tell us what we can expect around here when the cicadas emerge. Based on our neighbors’ 1990 experience, can we expect a lot of cicadas, very few, or none at all? Our results to date: Our neighbors say they saw some Periodical Cicadas in 2000, but not as many here as elsewhere (like at Brookfield Zoo and in Elmwood Park.) Write Things Down. Once the cicadas start emerging, we want to see and hear it happen. What time of day will they emerge? When will they start to sing? We will keep written records, and post them on our CicadaBlog and elsewhere on this site. Watch One Shed Its Skin. At least once this spring we will bring a nymph into our house so we can watch it shed close up. Here's a link to a page with some lessons we learned about doing this with annual cicadas: http://saltthesandbox.org/cicada_hunt/YouCanDo.htm#KeepLiveCicadas This spring, we may set up a much larger cage--like a 10-gallon aquarium or larger--so we can be sure the cicada nymphs turn into healthy adults. Which Birds Eat Them? We are really into birding right now, so we will keep records of all the birds (and other animals) we see eating cicadas. How Many Kinds? What types of periodical cicadas are in our neighborhood? The scientists suggest we may have three different kinds. We will use appearance and songs to tell them apart, using this website: http://hydrodictyon.eeb.uconn.edu/projects/cicada/sp_pages/species_NA.html#Magicicada How Many Emerged Here? We also hope to do some counts of emergence holes on
the tree lawn in front of our house. There is a large American Elm tree here, and we can imagine
that lots of cicada nymphs have been sucking on its roots for the past 17 years. If we
come up with a good way to count holes, then we can compare what we find with what
cicada scientists have recorded in their studies. This online teachers' guide has
an interesting idea for counting holes on page 39: Which Bugs Eat Them? We want to look for insects that specialize in eating cicadas, or in feeding them to their young–like Cicada Killer Wasps and Sandalid Beetles. Most years we only see these insects in July, August, and September. Will these cicada-eaters come out early this year? Find Eggs and Babies. We will try to find the eggs (laid in live twigs) and
the babies (which fall to the ground when they hatch). We tried this one year with
annual cicadas, but without success. Which People Will Eat Them?
Ethan will want to cook and eat a few cicadas, and maybe serve some to his
friends. If the cicadas emerge a bit earlier than expected, we may snack
on them at Ethan's birthday party. Here's a link to a PDF file with some recipes we may
try: |
|
Click here to return to our main Periodical Cicada page Cicada Hunt! is
part of the Salt the Sandbox Web.
This page was created on April 1, 2007, and it was last updated on May
17, 2007. |
