First Spotting/Hearing of the Year

We were having dinner on the patio this evening - what we do most evenings as long as the weather is nice - when there was a flash to the left of us toward the kitchen window. We could see that it was a relatively large insect, which then disappeared toward the trees and shrubs along the fence with our neighbor, John. After a short discussion about "what was that, a Japanese Beetle?" We were just talking about why our crepe myrtles had not yet bloomed and after learning a couple of weeks ago from Jan's brother who lives in Charlotte that those bugs (1) love crepe myrtles - we heard the distinct rapid fire rhythm sound of the cicada. They show up each year around here, and we don't know when the next seven-year cycle will happen - maybe this year we will experience the hoard of these larger-than-usualinsects. It hard to tell what the season will bring, man-eating cicada, or man eating cicada.

This follows by a few weeks the appearance of our first fireflies - only one at a time, it seemed - but this evening there are many hoovering over the lawn that has as much white clover growing in the turf among the tufts of grass. I probably should keep a better journal of what and when different critters appear around here. It has also obviously been post-birthing time for the cotton tail rabbits here - we have a mother and three kits (2). We also keep seeing the Eastern Box Turtles, and the diversity of birds keeps up increasing at a nice pace - especially as we keep up with filling the bird feeder with seed.
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A cicada (pronounced /sɪˈkɑːdə/ or pronounced /sɪˈkeɪdə/) is an insect of the order Hemiptera, suborder Auchenorrhyncha, in the superfamily Cicadoidea, with large eyes wide apart on the head and usually transparent, well-veined wings. There are about 2,500 species of cicada around the world, and many remain unclassified. Cicadas live in temperate to tropical climates where they are among the most widely recognized of all insects, mainly due to their large size and remarkable acoustic talents. Cicadas are sometimes colloquially called "locusts",[1] although they are unrelated to true locusts, which are a kind of grasshopper. They are also known as "jar flies". Cicadas are related to leafhoppers and spittlebugs. In parts of the southern Appalachian Mountains in the United States, they are known as "dry flies" because of the dry shell that they leave behind.
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(1) Cicada are true bugs, in the order Hemiptera. To the layperson, a bug is a bug is a bug, all insects are bugs. But to the highly trained professional - or folks like me who got a C grade in economic entomology - the different kinds of insects are classified by different morphological characters and grouped into orders. Hemiptera is the Order for true bugs.

(2) It was dusk, so the lighting was not very good, but the mother rabbit was nursing two of the kits. The third had run to the other side of the yard while we were watching. The kits nurse on their backs - suckling up. The doe spreads here front leg while sitting on her haunches to accommodate her litter.