What would be a good present for someone who just graduated from college with a degree in entomology? Well, how about a quick trip to the Midwest to hunt for bugs?
May 2024 marked a special occasion that was well-reported (maybe over-reported) by the mainstream media: the emergence of two distinct periodical cicada broods at the same time: Brood XIX, the “Great Southern Brood” of 13-year cicadas; and Brood XIII, the “Northern Illinois Brood” of 17-year cicadas. These lifecycles are both prime numbers and therefore the confluence occurs only once every 17 X 13 = 221 years. So the last time this happened was in 1803.
That’s what drew the media interest but it was kind of bogus. The overlapping territory was quite small, confined to a narrow strip of central Illinois. Even within the strip they wouldn’t appear everywhere, all at once. And even more — based on personal observation — there were plenty of spots in there with absolutely no indications of cicadas at all. But none of that dissuaded us. We were going to find those critters!
So we landed in St. Louis, Missouri (clearly within the Great Southern Brood) and drove immediately to Peoria, Illinois (clearly within the Northern Illinois Brood). We intended to focus on Peoria the first day and St. Louis the second day, following an app called Cicada Safari as our spotting guide.
Sugar Creek
However, it wasn’t completely about the bugs. I wanted to get something out of it too if we had to spend a couple of days driving around the Midwest. So I added a couple of nonconforming items to the itinerary like the Sugar Creek Covered Bridge just south of Springfield, Illinois (map). It dated to either 1827 or 1880, which seemed like an extraordinary amount of uncertainty, but vintage enough to make it Illinois’ oldest covered bridge either way.
We were already on the lookout for cicadas at that point, stopping at two different rest areas along Interstate 55 since leaving St. Louis. At one we heard cicadas but they hid up in the treetops. The next one lacked any evidence of cicadas whatsoever. I wasn’t expecting anything at Sugar Creek other than an historic covered bridge, which would have been completely fine by the way.
Funny thing, cicadas started bouncing off of our windshield once we got within about a mile of the bridge. That seemed encouraging because we knew we could always backtrack if we didn’t see anything at the bridge. Not to matter, the park where the bridge sat absolutely swarmed with them. These were all 13-year dwarf cicadas (Magicicada tredecassini) from the Great Southern Brood and they must have just emerged the previous night. Nothing had been reported in Cicada Safari yet, and some of them still displayed the characteristic white coloring they have when they just emerge from their shells.
That fortunate experience took a lot of the pressure off of us even though this particular brood was our Day 2 target. At least we could say we recorded a meaningful sighting. It could only get better.
Fondulac Park West
Nonetheless, we hadn’t even begun our search for the Northern Illinois Brood yet. We crossed the amorphous boundary between broods somewhere along the drive and stopped at Fondulac Park West in East Peoria (map). Cicada Safari listed sightings only a few days old and it seemed like a solid possibility.
The treetops throbbed with an earsplitting buzz of male cicada mating calls. We could see them flying within the canopy but they rarely ventured down to earth. Eventually we found one little guy in the weeds who let us take a picture. This specimen was also a dwarf cicada, a cousin of the ones we found at Sugar Creek, except he was the 17-year variety (Magicicada cassini).
So now we could say we’d recorded information about both broods in Cicada Safari but we could always do better. There are seven species of the genus Magicicada, four with a 13-year cycle and three with a 17-year cycle, and we were only up to two.
Grandview Drive
Tripadvisor listed Grandview Drive as Peoria’s #2 Top Attraction right behind the Caterpillar Visitors Center (the heavy machinery company, not the insect). I saw Grandview Drive as a perfect place to hunt for cicadas, with recent sightings already reported. That made it #1 on my Peoria list.
Grandview Drive does indeed offer a drive with grand views, extending along a bluff above the Illinois River (map). But we didn’t savor the scenery even though it was rather nice. We parked at an overlook, ignored the attractive picnic area, ignored the expansive view, ignored the perfect weather, and headed straight towards the old growth treeline.
The tall unmowed grass along the edge absolutely teemed with cicadas, primarily the 17-year dwarfs. But we did find a much larger specimen, a variety sometimes called the Pharaoh Cicada (Magicicada septendecim). So now we’d observed two 17-year species and one 13-year species, and we felt pretty smug.
Peoria Zoo
Before we left home we researched three more Peoria possibilities including a local nature center. I figured we could always ask the naturalists for leads if we struck out. However, we didn’t need it anymore because cicada spotting was pretty easy that day or we were pretty lucky. It didn’t matter. We felt a lot like the predators now; so overwhelmed by cicadas that we’d reached our fill for the day.
So instead we pivoted to the Peoria Zoo (map) as the afternoon waned. I was traveling with a kid who collects zoo visits and it seemed like a natural stop. It’s not very large and it attracted a local crowd, and it probably took only about an hour to cover the whole thing. By contrast, it took us about four and a half hours to finish the Toledo Zoo visit a couple of weeks earlier.
The zoo was maybe two miles away from Grandview Drive by air and yet it had no cicadas in spite of abundant mature trees on undisturbed ground. And that was the paradox, a bounty in one place and a drought in another for no discernible reason.
Celebratory Dinner
We finished the day at Obed & Isaac’s Microbrewery and Eatery in downtown Peoria (map). The city has been losing population like many other Midwestern places in recent decades. I guess that made it difficult to maintain a sizeable church congregation downtown, and this one got repurposed into a brewpub. It was a rather unusual dinning spot for a rather unusual day.
Then came Day 2.
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