Nashville’s 13-year periodical cicadas are coming this May, but what’s already here is panic.
For months, worried people have been asking about the 2024 “invasion.” Should they cover their trees? Should they wait to plant new trees? Should they reschedule outdoor events, and even indoor events? Will there be “too many” cicadas? No. The answer to all these questions is “no.”
3 reasons not to panic about “too many” cicadas:
Continue reading “Periodical Panic: Why Not To”Underneath Cottonwood trees right now, you might find leftover leaves. They tell a story. A strange story.
It’s the story of a particularly interesting aphid. Virgin birth! Live birth! Eggs! Wings! No wings! Sexual! Asexual! Above ground! Below ground! Sucking mouthparts! No mouth at all!
These aphids do it all.
I caught a Robin Redbreast red-handed: she was taking soil from a tray on the porch. She took my seedlings, too, but only to toss them aside. She was treating my lovingly planted seedtray as her personal mudpile. Robins need wet soil to make their nests.
Most yards nearby are solid turfgrass with no soil in sight, but even my yard’s bare patches aren’t useful to her: they are compressed with our walking, and cracked with no rain.
So I sat on the porch and watched the tray.
She came, she stole, she flew across the street.
Then I hid the tray under my chair. A moment later, the Robin was under my chair, too.
Continue reading “What a Robin Sees (Spring edition)”
SIDEWALK NATURE 