As adults they feed on plant fluids from the young twigs of trees and woody shrubs.
Contrary to popular opinion, adult cicadas do not cause serious plant damage from their feeding activities, but do damage plants as the result of their behavior of cutting small slits in the plant they use for places to deposit their eggs.
Trust me, they are different. The confusion arises because even people who know the difference between the two will still call a cicada a locust, for some reason. I grew up calling them locusts. As a kid we'd go around circling trees looking for the dried shells they'd leave on the trunks of trees when they outgrew their "skins" and shed them (rather like a snake). We'd stick them on our shirts (the feet will cling to fabric) to see who could find the most. (Yeah, we did weird things as kids, lol!)
I'd never been in an honest-to-goodness cicada swarm, though, until a few years ago. I was visiting a small town and the cicadas were flying everywhere. Imagine Hitchcock's movie, "The Birds," only with cicadas. That's how bad they were. They're pretty dumb, so they fly right into you. And, they're as ugly as sin, with big, red, beady eyes.
What are cicadas feeding off of to support swarms then?
As adults they feed on plant fluids from the young twigs of trees and woody shrubs.
Contrary to popular opinion, adult cicadas do not cause serious plant damage from their feeding activities, but do damage plants as the result of their behavior of cutting small slits in the plant they use for places to deposit their eggs.
https://www.orkin.com/other/cicadas/diet
https://www.cicadamania.com/cicadas/what-do-cicadas-eat/
Interesting, thanks. They do seem to be quite a bit different than locusts after all.
Trust me, they are different. The confusion arises because even people who know the difference between the two will still call a cicada a locust, for some reason. I grew up calling them locusts. As a kid we'd go around circling trees looking for the dried shells they'd leave on the trunks of trees when they outgrew their "skins" and shed them (rather like a snake). We'd stick them on our shirts (the feet will cling to fabric) to see who could find the most. (Yeah, we did weird things as kids, lol!)
I'd never been in an honest-to-goodness cicada swarm, though, until a few years ago. I was visiting a small town and the cicadas were flying everywhere. Imagine Hitchcock's movie, "The Birds," only with cicadas. That's how bad they were. They're pretty dumb, so they fly right into you. And, they're as ugly as sin, with big, red, beady eyes.