magicicada's Favourites

Feeding on a chickadee carcass. At least 4 came in to share. Also investigated by a White-breasted Nuthatch but that chose not to feed.
Dead bird may have been a window strike, but if so had been moved away from the house.

Neotibicen tibicen tibicen (Swamp Cicada)

Audio is of a single full song from 1 of 2 individuals on a telephone pole along Pleasant Plains Road in the Great Swamp NWR. Target song from 0:01 - 0:17 (fairly heavy Swamp Cicada chorus in the background of entire recording). Identified to species audibly and to subspecies by range and visuals (both individuals on pole had black hind collars). Audio made at 9:53am. Audio normalized at -3db.

• Marantz PMD661 MKII
• Wildtronics Pro Mono Parabolic Microphone
• Wildtronics 22" Parabola

An unusual visitor at the buglight. Total length 50 mm, body length 33 mm. I posted one of these from my neighborhood to BugGuide 10 years ago, but they've still only got 1 other from NJ, & that's from Cape May (2.5 hours south). So is this a very local population?? Or is it just undersampled?

Ventral photo shows the black ventromedial stripe & bowed wing costa. Sound recording is a brief "buzz off!" call. I accidentally triggered it trying to place the bug back on the sheet, & decided to replicate it with the recorder running. It was surprisingly hard to annoy the bug sufficiently!

At this loc, total eclipse was from 13:27:27 CDT to 13:29:01 CDT (online data).

Cicadas had been singing early in day but were quiet by 10:00 CDT. They began singing at 13:24 before totality but when light was dusk-like, and continued through 13:30, then were quiet again.

I collected several small green cicadas (photo) but had also seen one much larger black one day before, so not sure which species was singing (or both). Recorded singing for 18 sec at 13:25 (attached).

Habitat is residential neighborhood backed by oak-hickory woods on shale hill.

Herpes Simplex Virus-1 (HSV-1) causing human esophagitis. All images are from the same patient and are: cytology brushing, cytology cell block, tissue biopsy H&E stain and HSV-1 immunostain. Cells show the “3 Ms “ that help make the diagnosis: molding, multinucleation, and margination of nuclear chromatin. HSV-1 infects the mouth and upper GI tract. HSV-2 infects the genitalia, genital skin, and the rectum. Both would look the same under the microscope. Of course individual viral particles would need electron microscopy to see. What we see here is the effect of viral infection on esophageal squamous cells.