This spring and early summer was supposed to be a time to "come on feel the noize" of cicadas. Two broods of periodic cicadas — one on a 17-year cycle, the other on a 13-year period — are emerging at the same time.
But McLean County residents have NOT heard that pumped up volume so much.
Emily Baldoni of Normal has been looking everywhere in town for cicadas. She has found nothing big, though she was hopeful as WGLT caught up with her Thursday on the Illinois State University Quad.
"I'm hearing like one single cicada. It starts with like (imitates cicada). Now, it's stopped," said Baldoni.
Baldoni has been taking lunches on the Quad to look for emergence tunnels. Very occasionally, she will hear one or two. Baldoni said that's very different from the din of many together.
"It can sound otherworldly. It's just this really loud drone," said Baldoni.
Baldoni said she got interested in cicadas a couple decades ago when there was a big emergence of Brood X on the east coast.
"It was intense. We lived in a neighborhood with a lot of old-growth trees, and they were just everywhere. I just got a little bit obsessed with them. I think they are really cool animals," said Baldoni. "They have this crazy lifecycle where they live underground for 17 years and then they come up and live it up for just a few short weeks above ground. By the time you see them, they're like almost old enough to vote."
So, not such a cicada rager after all for McLean County. State entomologist Chris Dietrich said you can blame a housing shortage — for cicadas, not the one for humans.
"They're really patchy because they require a certain kind of habitat, specifically mature forests. And as you know much of Illinois was historically prairie and currently mostly corn and soybean fields," said Dietrich.
Decatur and Springfield, meanwhile, have lots and lots of cicada karaoke.
Dietrich said since you need forest undisturbed for several decades to have periodic cicadas, and preferably a lot longer because cicadas don't get around so much, you should look to land near waterways to find them.
"I have seen reports of large numbers of cicadas from the Mackinaw River area and Lake Bloomington, those areas north of town," said Dietrich.
The University of Connecticut also has a website that plots out historic distributions of cicadas. That suggests Funks Grove, Clinton Lake, and the Vermilion River in Livingston County might also be good places to listen.
Still, Dietrich said the emergence of the 17-year cicadas and the 13-year cicadas together for the first time in a couple centuries is an opportunity for new science.
No results yet on hookups of these Romeo and Juliet families of cicadas.
Longer term, Dietrich said the advance of climate change, extreme weather events, and fragmented habitat may put broods of periodic cicadas at risk, and their crowd of loud boisterous voices could become ever softer and more isolated.
Meanwhile, Emily Baldoni will continue this year's cicada quest outside of Bloomington-Normal. Dietrich said Baldoni might want to hurry. A mild winter and warm spring mean cicada party time kicked off earlier than usual this year, and in some spots it's almost last-call.
If you miss out though, Dietrich pointed out, you still have the comforting late-summer sound of annual cicadas to look forward to.
