Life long perspective from Bexar and adjoining counties...
Mike Quinn
From: Tom Lott <s>
Date: Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 6:41 PM
Subject: Re: [texbirds] Req. for new Giant Cicada county records
To: Mike Quinn <ento...@gmail.com>
I am belatedly following up on your request for information concerning the Giant Cicada posted on the Texbirds listserve.
I am a 63 year-old native Texan who has lived for most of my life in Bexar and Atascosa counties. For the first ten years of my life we lived about 75 meters west of the San Antonio River, just south of the downtown area. The river in that area was in a mostly natural condition, with a substantial gallery forest, especially on the west side. This remained the largely case even after channelization activities began sometime ca. 1954-55 in the cause of flood control. As a child during the 1950s, I can vividly remember the unmistakable calls of this insect daily reaching a considerable volume along the river in this area, mainly during the morning and early evening hours (dusk). This was during the peak of the 1950s drought, which essentially ended in 1957. As best as I can remember, the Giant Cicada was consistently present during this entire period, as were the fireflies that typically began to appear as the cicadas were shutting down.
In 1956 we moved farther south in Bexar County into what was basically a subdivision that had been carved out of Tamualipan Thornscrub even though it sat upon the tail-end of the Blackland Prairie. The Giant Cicada was consistently there also, although seemingly not in as great numbers as it had been along the river.
In the 1970s I lived in Wilson County in the midst of virtually pristine oak-hickory woodland. The Giant Cicada was occasionally heard there, though certainly not in the numbers that it had been in the previous two localities.
From the early 1980s until the present I have lived in Atascosa County, in essentially Live Oak Savanna, just a few miles north of the transition into the Brush Country of the south. Giant Cicadas have also been present here, although they seem to vary quite a bit in numbers from year to year. They are usually heard in the distance, perhaps only one or two at a time. This year, however, even with the extreme drought conditions, they have been quite prevalent and vociferous; I often hear them sporadically throughout the day, but still mainly at dawn and dusk. There does seem to be a lot more of them and they seem to be closer than usual.
Additionally, I was somewhat surprised to hear this familiar sound on my first trips to Belize, Costa Rica, and Guatemala (although I thought I had heard them on the soundtrack of the old Harrison Ford film The Mosquito Coast, which was filmed in Belize).
As an aside, I was wondering if you were aware that copperheads opportunistically gorge upon the emerging nymphs of various cicadas. At certain times cicadas make up a significant portion of copperheads’ diets and some of them even go arboreal, tracking the nymphs up the trees and bushes. Here is a photo I shot of a captive copperhead consuming a de-winged adult (adults with wings can frequently escape a copperhead’s grasp by rapidly flapping their wings): http://southwesternherp.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1200185774
Sorry to ramble on with such a bunch of anecdotal observations, but I thought they might be of some interest in getting the history of Quesada gigas right for south Texas; I personally cannot ever remember them not being here. I will also post your request for information on a local herp website that I help moderate. I really appreciate and enjoy your website.
Tom Lott
Pleasanton, TX