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Naturalist loves to teach about wildlife
AMANA — Mary Blair has been with Iowa County Conservation since 2016.
Before that, she worked in conservation education with Muscatine County Conservation and later served as a naturalist for Lee County.
A graduate of Kirkwood Community College and the University of Iowa, Blair spent a couple of summers with the U of I Summer Wildlife Camps where she taught children about nature.
Blair continues to teach. In July she found that opportunity through summer reading programs.
“I get to teach people about nature,” Blair told children at the Amana library. “And one of my favorite things to teach about is the wildlife.”
In July, in Amana, Blair taught children about cicadas.
Cicadas are insects, Blair told the children. Insects have three main body parts (a head, thorax and abdomen), two eyes, six legs, two antenna, two wings and an exoskeleton.
They go through metamorphosis, changing from larva to adults.
Annual cicadas come out every year, said Blair, but this year, 17-year cicadas and 13-year cicadas also emerged.
“That’s why we’re seeing a lot more cicadas than we usually do,” said Blair.
The 17-year cicadas spend 17 years underground as larva. The 13-year cicadas spend 13 years underground.
But people in Iowa hear cicadas every year, said Blair. Those are the annual cicadas. Annual cicadas spend September to May underground.
The periodical cicadas are more colorful than the annual cicadas, Blair said. The periodical cicadas have red eyes and orange coloring on their wings and legs.
When the soil reaches about 64 degrees, male cicadas emerge from underground where they’ve lived as larva, said Blair. The females emerge a little later.
The females have abdomens that are more pointed than those of the males because they have ovipositors, organs they use to deposit eggs under the bark of trees.
Cicadas are loud, Blair said. Though children told Blair they hear the cicadas as the sun starts to go down, she said the periodical cicadas make noise during the day.
“For such a small insect, they make a really loud noise,” Blair said. The sound is made by a tymbal located under their wings.
Blair played cicada sounds on her phone. Some were familiar to the students. Others were not.
“They do make more than one sound,” said Blair. And while students couldn’t hear the sounds from her phone very well, they won’t have any trouble hearing them in the wild, she said.
The sound can reach 80-100 decibels, the same as a lawn mower or jackhammer. Cicadas are louder when there are a lot of them, said Blair.
“Some people enjoy the sound. Some people don’t like it.”
The periodical cicadas spend most of their lives underground. They transform, reproduce and die in the space of a few days, Blair said.
Cicada eggs look like grains of rice. The female cicada can lay hundreds of them. They hatch in six weeks.
When the eggs hatch, said Blair, the larva fall to the ground and burrow into the soil. They drink juices from the roots of trees.
When the cicadas emerge from underground, they climb onto trunks of trees or stems of plants. One student said cicadas like her wooden swing and cover it with exoskeletons as they shed.
Hanging on to the tree or plant, cicadas push their bodies out through the back of their exoskeletons and become new creatures — with wings.
Cicadas are very vulnerable when they first shed. It takes about 30 minutes to harden and pump its wings full of blood, said Blair.
Many cicadas are eaten by animals such as owls, turtles, raccoons and hawks. They don’t move fast and are easy to catch. Many birds feed cicadas to their young.
That’s why cicadas lay so many eggs, said Blair. Large numbers ensure that some will live to reproduce and keep the species from dying out.
Even when cicadas don’t live, they are beneficial, said Blair. They provide food for other animals. And when the exoskeletons fall from the trees, they fertilize the soil.
With annuals and two periodical cicadas emerging this year, social media gave people an outlet for their interest in the rare event. Phone apps like Cicada Safari and iNaturalist allow people to take photos and audio and submit it to the app, Blair said.
