To see an incredible amount of cicadas being amorous, you’re going to have to go to Greensboro.
The Piedmont Triad area is the southern terminus for the magicicada line known as Brood II. The insects emerge after 17 years in the ground, molt their hard exoskeleton and engage in one of the world’s largest insect singles’ parties. The red-eyed, green-bodied, winged creatures go as far north as Connecticut, with large numbers typically seen around Northern Virginia and around New York City.
According to Internet hub magicicada.com, reports of the latest outbreak have been seen as far east as Cary. Cicadas will still emerge around Lenoir County, but they’re the more-common “annual” variety that live two or three years, instead of the swarms that emerge after 13 or 17 years.
“We definitely have cicadas in this part of the state, but no particularly impactful ones for us,” said Nicole Sanchez of the Lenoir County Cooperative Extension Service.
In essence, what you have is what you get, when it comes to the insects. They’re not known for being migratory, usually staying in the same general area.
“The adults come out — they breed pretty close to where they emerge, because they do feed underground on the roots of their hosts in their nest,” said Kelly Oten, forest health specialist with the N.C. Forest Service. “So, when they emerge the host is right there — they don’t really have to travel far to find a host.”
As far as environmental impact, there’s not much of one.
“They do so little damage, I think it’s more about the noise aggravation,” Sanchez said. “They don’t get into people’s homes, they don’t bite, they don’t sting, they don’t carry disease. It’s just about the noise.”
N.C. Forestry Service Forest Health Protection Head Robert Trickel said he was in Northern Virginia during a major outbreak, and the cicadas were hard to ignore.
“It was noisy,” Trickel said. “The radio stations, even, when they gave the pollen count and all that stuff, they gave the decibel reading for the things. It was just noisy everywhere you went. You could hear them with the windows closed in the car.”
The main impact cicadas have is being a high-protein food source for birds, and once their bodies fall into water, for fish. Annual cicadas already have a lower population presence, but among periodical cicadas like Brood II, the massive numbers emerging from the ground ensures there’s more supply than demand.
And they are edible for people. Former ECU professor Hal Daniel received a lot of attention several years ago promoting cicadas in meals, including a spicy cicada stir-fry.
Wes Wolfe can be reached at 252-559-1075 or wes.wolfe@kinston.com. Follow him on Twitter @WolfeReports.
For more information on the 17-year cicada outbreak, visit magicicada.org.