Morgan Watkins: Week 3 Recap

This week the Brood X cicadas finally came out! We surveyed our sites on Monday after it got pretty hot over the weekend and we finally saw cicadas on the way to the sites. It wasn’t until Thursday though that we actually saw the cicadas at our sites. Throughout the week, the number of cicadas slowly increased and we began to hear them too. They sound so different from normal cicadas and it was weird to finally see them emerging from their shells with white bodies and red eyes. It seems like more cicadas will emerge because they aren’t particularly loud yet, and my brother, who lives in Louisville, KY, says they are so loud that you can hardly think straight.

We’ve been going through our camera and sound data a lot this week and have gotten pretty decent at figuring out what animals are being captured on camera as well as what animals are making particular sounds at different frequencies. It’s also fun to see all of the animals we are capturing on camera like groundhogs, coyotes, birds, and bugs flying at night. The sound recorders have captured a lot of bat noises too, which are very faint and high pitched. This week we are hoping to capture some cicadas on camera once more are present so that we can keep track of how many are at our sites and if they are attracting predators.