Pharaoh cicadas emerge after seventeen years
June 6, 2026
The drone begins before dawn in the woodlands near Morristown, a low mechanical hum that seems to rise from the earth itself. Seventeen years underground, and now the pharaoh cicadas push through soil that has seen seasons the insects never witnessed. Their red eyes catch the early light as they climb the nearest vertical surface: oak bark, fence posts, the stems of invasive multiflora rose that has spread through these woods since their last emergence. The pharaoh cicada spends nearly its entire life as a pale, burrowing nymph, feeding on tree root fluids in the darkness below. For seventeen years, it grows slowly, molting through five stages while the forest above changes. Trees fall and new ones take root. The white ash overhead shows stress from invasive insects, but its roots still feed the cicadas below. When soil temperature reaches exactly sixty-four degrees Fahrenheit, some trigger clicks in their bodies. They dig upward through two feet of earth, emerging by the thousands on the same night. The timing is everything. Seventeen years creates a prime number cycle that predators cannot match. Birds like the common grackle and gray catbird feast on the first emergents, but the sheer abundance overwhelms them. Most cicadas survive to molt one final time, splitting their brown nymphal shells and unfurling transparent wings. Males climb high into the canopy, where they vibrate specialized membranes called tymbals to produce their species-specific song. The sound carries for miles. Females respond with wing flicks that create sharp clicking sounds. After mating, females use their saw-like ovipositors to cut slits in tree branches, laying eggs that will hatch in six weeks. The tiny nymphs drop to the ground and burrow down, beginning another seventeen-year wait. This synchronous emergence shapes the entire ecosystem. Tree swallows and purple martins gorge on flying adults. Ground-dwelling creatures like the spotted turtle find windfall protein from cicadas that fall or are knocked from branches. Even the forest floor changes as millions of emergence holes pockmark the soil, aerating compacted earth. The invasive Japanese honeysuckle may benefit from this temporary soil disruption, its seeds finding new purchase in the disturbed ground. The drone continues through the morning, a sound that connects this June to 2009, and 2009 to 1992, each emergence a precisely timed reunion with the sun. Close your eyes where you are and listen for that low, thrumming frequency that seems to come from everywhere at once.
Chimney swifts return to the leafed canopy
May 22, 2026
The canopy at Great Swamp has thickened into its full green presence. White oak and sugar maple leaves have expanded to catch the late spring light, and beneath them the understory has filled with the broad leaves of flowering dogwood and the delicate foliage of spicebush. Above this green ceiling, small dark shapes cut tight arcs through the air. Chimney swifts have returned to breed, and they hunt now against the backdrop of this newly leafed forest. These threatened birds spend almost their entire lives airborne, feeding on flying insects that rise from the warming canopy below. Their wings beat in rapid, shallow strokes, different from the deeper wingbeats of swallows. They bank sharply, following the erratic flight paths of their prey with movements that seem to anticipate where an insect will be rather than where it is. A swift's mouth opens wide as it flies, creating a funnel that captures small moths, flying ants, beetles, and midges that emerge from the forest. The timing matters. As the trees have leafed out, they have created habitat for countless insects that the swifts depend on. Aphids feed on the new maple leaves and take flight when disturbed. Small moths emerge from pupae that overwintered in the leaf litter below the oaks. Flying ants leave their colonies in the warming soil to establish new ones. The forest canopy acts as both nursery and launch pad for the aerial insects that sustain these birds through their breeding season. Each layer of leaves creates microclimates where different insects develop, and each warm afternoon brings new flights of prey into the air column above the trees. The swifts nest in chimneys and other vertical structures, but they hunt here above the forest because this is where their food lives. A single swift can consume over a thousand flying insects in a day during breeding season, when adults are feeding both themselves and their young. They drink by skimming the surface of open water, and they even mate in flight, but it is the rich insect life rising from this diverse forest that draws them back each spring. Listen for their high chattering calls as they wheel overhead. The sound carries down through the green canopy that feeds the insects that feed the swifts, a chain of energy that begins with sunlight on new leaves and ends with these small, tireless hunters scribing their paths against the sky.
Water temperatures hit 25°C this week while streamflow collapsed to barely a trickle — warm, slow water loses dissolved oxygen rapidly, and the stress on cold-water specialists is acute. Brook Trout cannot survive above 20°C; these conditions are already 2–5°C beyond their thermal tolerance . The spring-fed refugia—cool-water pockets fed by groundwater—that once sustained these populations through summer have been largely severed by development, leaving fish nowhere to flee. USGS monitoring shows dissolved oxygen averaging 7.6 mg/L over the past two weeks, technically adequate, but the margin is razor-thin. At current temperatures and flow, any further warming or oxygen depletion will be lethal. The slow creep of development upstream, cutting springs and diverting seepage, has eliminated the evolutionary escape routes that allowed trout to persist through seasonal heat stress.
