Arriving at the lodge for my seventh summer season of guiding, I was greeted by this sight along one of the trails. To the uninitiated, it looks quite bizarre and I love asking my guests what they think it could possibly be, with very few of them actually getting it right. I call it Cicada city, the rather phallic constructions being made by cicada larvae burrowing deep into the earth and forming these 'chimneys' to help regulate the temperature and humidity of their burrows. After several years (anything from two to seventeen, depending on the species) underground, the nymph will crawl up the nearest tree, and a fresh, adult cicida will emerge out of their nymphal exoskeleton (below), ready to head up into the trees and make hearing anything else in the forest virtually impossible, much to the dismay of the birders!
