BATAVIA, Ohio — The buzzing chorus rising from Clermont County’s parks and preserves this week belongs to a cicada that keeps banker’s hours, and the Clermont County Park District is asking residents to listen for it.
The park district said in a Facebook post that swamp cicadas, also known as morning cicadas, are emerging now across the county’s parks. “Sound up! But maybe not too much…” the district wrote, describing the insect’s distinctive song.
The species, known scientifically as Neotibicen tibicen, is one of several annual cicadas found in Ohio. Unlike the periodical cicadas that surface only once every 13 or 17 years, morning cicadas emerge every summer. They are dark-bodied insects with bright green patches on the head and blue-green veining across their wings, and they favor low, weedy vegetation and shrubs in swampy or marshy ground, though they also turn up in dry meadows and overgrown fields — habitat common to the park district’s preserves along the county’s waterways.
True to their nickname, morning cicadas sing almost exclusively from early morning until around noon, with little activity in the afternoon. Each call begins as a soft buzz that builds into a pulsating drone, peaks in a crescendo and then tapers off before cutting out abruptly, a cycle that lasts roughly 10 to 15 seconds.
The Clermont County Park District has managed the county’s public green space since 1970, when it was formed as a political subdivision of the state and took over what had been a Rotary Club park in Batavia, turning it into Sycamore Park. The district’s stated mission is to “seek, discover and enhance Clermont County’s natural abundance,” and it now oversees more than 1,000 acres of land, including five community parks, four nature preserves and the Williamsburg to Batavia Bike Trail. A three-member volunteer board of commissioners, appointed by the county’s probate judge to unpaid three-year terms, governs the district.
The information contained in this story was obtained from the Clermont County Park District.