Tag: Sierra Vista

There is something about seeing a roadrunner in a tree that makes it very clear how closely they are related to cuckoos.

Greater roadrunner (Geococcyx californianus) in a Chinese pistache tree (Pistacia chinensis), at the Sierra Vista Environmental Operations Park, Sierra Vista, Arizona.

The only disappointment on the first day of my Big Week was finding a reclamation pond at the Sierra Vista Environmental Operations Park had been drained, and the bulrushes and cattails burned. I expected to find white-faced ibises there to add to my list. It must have been done very recently, because it was still smoldering. But then this handsome coyote showed up, posing and looking like he was ready to try for the Westminster Kennel Club show. Birding is more than birds. 

Brunch.

Arizona mantis (Stagmomantis limbata) devouring a live, unidentified cicada, Sierra Vista, Arizona. This was taken during my morning walk today.

The annual cicadas are at the peak of this year’s emergence. Last night I measured their pulsating song at levels between 90 and 110 decibels, which is in the range of chain saws and low-flying jet planes. During the day only a few cicadas sing at once, but in the last hours before nightfall everyone wants to join in. It doesn’t last long, only an hour of so each evening, but while it lasts it is the sound of insanity.  

Condensation series.

This may seem to be an odd choice of subject, but in the dry air of southeastern Arizona there is usually not a lot of moisture to condense. Then during the few weeks of our monsoon season, hot humid air pushes up from the Gulf of California, bringing rain and enough rare moisture to collect on the side of an iced drink.  

I found a cicada nymph crawling across my patio after a recent storm. The moisture in the soil from the monsoon rain was a signal for the insect to emerge from the ground and begin its brief time in the treetops.

This sequence shows the final ecdysis or molt, as the nymph reached its adult stage. Cicadas are members of order Hemiptera—the true bugs—and are hemimetabolist. Hemimetabolism is sometimes called incomplete metamorphosis. The life cycles of hemimetabolist insects omit a pupal stage, and at each instar—the stages of growth between molts—the developing insect resembles the adult form more fully, but smaller, and without functional wings. At the final adult stage the insect, called an imago, is sexually mature.

There are about fifty cicada species in Arizona. I have not attempted to identify this one. I let the nymph crawl on a wooden spoon to be photographed, and moved the teneral imago outside to let its wings harden and strike up it’s song. Ecdysis took about an hour to complete.

Yes, I have seen the Alien movies. And yes, the similarity is striking.