40 years ago when I was in my mid teens living in Arlington, Texas, I would climb trees to collect the various cicada species calling in the area. Back then there was seemingly no way possible to even remotely identify anything, but it was nevertheless interesting to see the different varieties. Fast forward to today, a young person would easily get all of the species identified by posting them on inaturalist.
I find my interest in cicadas rekindled to some extent and am enjoying learning all the different species that occur in Texas.
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Hi Dan. As a lifelong "vertebrate person", I find arthropod ID to be quite challenging, but I'm willing and interested in venturing out on my own. If I want to start trying to ID cicadas before submitting my guesses to iNaturalist for the experts to deal with, where is a good place to start?
cypseloides, for me the best thing has been to start just browsing inaturalist observations for my state. After a while the differences are obvious. I have also found the Cicada Mania website to be very useful: http://www.cicadamania.com/. Species lists with pictures, sounds and info are available for each state. Also bugguide.net is useful.
Thank you for sharing the cicadamania link and for helping me with ID's; I appreciate your knowledge and value your inputs for education. You're right .. iNaturalist is a fantastic way to ID species. ~ Shannon
Same here - We had our own names we made up in the neighborhood to identify them and had a birdcage we would put them in... Fun times!
Tibicen superbus was easily the most common...
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