Yeah, or Norm Lewis will have to have to scroll it across the bottom half of the screen inside a bright blue bar with a flashing red county map every 5 minutes, along with his name, the station’s name, and maybe even a plug for a different story coming up at 11:00.
Here (No. VA), the drone was relaxing at a distance, but if you wandered into a clump of woods where they were heavily concentrated, the sound was deafening - like having a chain saw in your head.
They certainly left behind a lot of evidence of their passing. They burrow into the ends of branches, about 8-12" from the tip, and lay their eggs. That kills off the branch tip. So, we’ve got lots of trees that have dead leaves at the ends of their branches. The larger, mature trees can take the punishment, but there are a lot of smaller trees that probably won’t survive.
The weird thing is that it’s not every tree that’s been affected. Not even every tree in a given area. The damage is spotty and scattered. The cicadas seem to have been very selective about where they laid their eggs.
Oh, is that what that was? My sister and I drove down to DC for a family thing a couple of weeks ago and we couldn’t figure out what was going on with the trees.
It’s called “flagging” by the entemologists.
And it looks really bizarre when you’re driving around, especially on the Beltway.
You can see exactly where they laid their eggs. There’ll be a bunch of dead spots on one tree and the one next to it is untouched.
I am so glad! those cicadas are gone! Yes, the DC suburbs turned out to be Brood-X Central. Now I didn’t have any problem with the cicadas as long as they didn’t bother me. But they kept wanting to land on me! First I had one on my chest–a friend scooped that one up and deposited it back outdoors. The worst was the one that somehow got up underneath of my top…I didn’t discover it until I was at my desk, working at my PC, when I felt something on my back, went to scratch it, then heard that dreaded buzz-zap. I hollared, leapt out of my chair, the cicada flew out and landed on the floor… I had to have a co-worker scoop that one up for me too. I asbsolutely refused to touch the things. I didn’t kill any (knowingly, that it).
The eggs they have left behind are quite visible on many of the trees. They didn’t seem to like the Bradford pear trees, however. Nor many of the ornamental cherry trees. Strange!