Cicadas Digging Out

From State Rep. Dan Ugaste comes this information:

17-year cicadas to emerge this spring

The 17-year cicadas are a woodland insect who live very quietly and underground for much of their lives. 

Very briefly at the end of their lives, the cicadas experience a great adventure: they dig themselves up out of the ground, climb out into the sunlight, and begin to sing loud mating chirps.  

The spring of 2021 will be one of the spike in which a significant number of 17-year cicadas will emerge from the ground in Eastern Illinois. 

Emergence will come in the late springtime, during the final week on May and the first two weeks of June.

The song of the cicada is distinctive and many Illinoisans recognize what the little insects sound like. 

Spikes in cicada population are happy events for  animals, such as frogs and bug-eating birds, that relish them. 

The insect crop that will emerge to breed this year is called “Brood 10” or “Brood X.” 

This brood is also found in large numbers in much of Indiana. 

Members of this brood that reproduce will produce eggs that will go into the ground. 

Under the earth, the young cicadas of Brood X will develop and wait for their emergence in calendar year 2038.  

A major cicada event will also happen in Illinois in 2024, when two broods, Brood XIII and Brood XIX, are both expected to emerge

By coincidence, 2024 will also be the year of a major solar eclipse in Illinois. 

The moon’s shadow is scheduled to pass over Southern Illinois on April 8, 2024.


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