The much-heralded Brood XIV 17-year cicadas have finally arrived. Have they been serenading you? If you’re in the emergence zone, this is really old news at this point, as they emerged weeks ago and most have probably laid eggs and kicked the bucket at this point. But how does this apparent bonanza affect birds? Do they roll around in them laughing, incredulous at their luck? Do they have more chicks? Do they grow morbidly obese? And is it cicayda or cicahda? Thankfully, I’m here to answer all of what I assume are your burning questions about birds and cicadas. Cicahdas. Whatever.
First, if you’re wondering, I still haven’t made it to see and hear the cicada hordes anywhere in the Mid and Upper Cape cicada hot zones, but I have managed to hear a few of them in outlying places that weren’t supposed to have any, including the Mass Audubon sanctuaries in Barnstable in Wellfleet. The call is amazing – having only heard a few and not a deafening chorus, I have the luxury of appreciating this bizarre , sci-fi sound effect of an insect call.
It’s of course been 17 years since we last saw a mass emergence of this species, known as the Pharaoh Cicada. That means most birds that saw the last emergence are long dead, so it’s the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the previous beneficiaries enjoying this year’s bounty. Surely any birds in the emergence zone are fat and happy right now, and presumably pumping out more chicks, right? The research says, probably. But there are actually several things happening in the ecosystem thanks to the cicadas.
In terms of birds breeding more successfully, a guy named Mike Watson found the bluebirds he monitored in Ohio produced 26% more chicks than even the previous best-year-ever during the Brood V outbreak. When he dug deeper, he didn’t find that the percentage of chicks that survived per nest went up, it was that the adults were so hale and hearty with all the easy food that they became super moms and dads, laying more eggs and renesting more times that season. The cicadas are probably hard to feed to young nestlings because they are so big, but some bluebirds took to ripping out a soft part of the abdomen to feed to the chicks.
Another study found that several species of birds increased either during or after cicada outbreaks, especially cuckoos but also Red-bellied Woodpeckers, jays, grackles, titmice, and catbirds. Yet another study of the Brood X emergence near Washington D.C., found that in outbreak years, birds didn’t eat as many caterpillars, so the oaks were more defoliated and caterpillars were big and fat. Ingeniously, the researchers had made little clay caterpillars, put them on branches, and counted how many beak prints were in them in cicada and non-cicada years.
Of more local interest, our cicada outbreak has produced an outbreak of rare Mississippi Kites in addition to the Swallow-tailed Kites I have covered previously and exhaustively. At least three of these small, southern, largely insect-eating hawks has been parked in the yard of a Centerville birder for weeks, causing some local crowd control issues with curious birders. Not far over the bridge, in South Plymouth, an incredible four Mississippi Kites are munching the big bugs in a conservation area near Great Herring Pond, affording some lifetime viewing and photography opportunities for local birders.
Though they normally nest in the southern tier and western states, I’ve long expected Mississippi Kites to start nesting on the Cape given that they established disjunct breeding areas in New Hampshire and Connecticut over the last 15 years. Despite that, and despite the fact that the Swallow-tailed Kites are apparently nesting, there’s no sign of nesting in these little groups of Mississippi kites. My theory is that they at least considered nesting, but the pairs couldn’t agree about whether it’s cic -ay-da or cic-ah-da and decide to call the whole thing off.
