Calendrical Clocks & Lammas
Sunday, July 3rd, 2022 07:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snoozefestaudioLet it be known for the record, that I heard the first cicada out there, on July 3rd.
I was out in the back yard getting some footage of the tiger lillies in full bloom... as they often are by the fourth of July. And it took my brain a minute to tell me, Hey!.. you're hearing a cicada!
That's because when it's 90F and sunny, and you hear that long lazy buzz from up in the canopy, it just fits, and feels totally normal. But in early July?.. around here?... I don't think that's normal.
It was only one cicada, somewhere high up in the neighbor's huge cottonwood tree next door. And it only did the one call. I listened for ten more minutes and it didn't repeat the call.
But listening for that lone cicada, I heard the one lone cricket in the neighborhood that's been hanging out across the street for about five days.
So, I guess this is how it starts... with a couple of loners here and there in early July.
------------{=0=}------------
I've been assuming for years that cricket loners in late June and early July are simply displaced visitors from regions south. But for a cicada, that doesn't make as much sense, because they do not travel well.
Cicada's can't jump, can barely walk, and suck at flying. If one falls out of a tree... it's pretty much game over.
I read up on their life cycle. The eggs are laid in the bark of twigs and after they hatch, the nymphs drop to the ground, and burrow down as deep as eight feet, then stay there for two or three years before emerging.
At this point they find the nearest tree, climb the trunk, and do one final molt... leaving behind the famously hollow cicada husk that everybody has seen before! The adult then crawls up to a high twig and hangs out there for the rest of it's life... which is about two months... sucking on tree sap, doing that buzzy mating call.
So, I've got to assume the one I heard today was local. And maybe this means the lone cricket across the street is also local. And maybe both of them are just ahead of the curve, for reaching maturity.
If that's true, then what does that curve look like?
My guess is, it won't be a steady increase from week to week. I'd expect it to be exponential. Not a lot going on for the first three weeks of July, but then a seeming explosion in the final week.
The book I'm reading now, Summer World: A Season of Bounty by Bernd Heinrich, says that the types of clocks used by plants and insects varies between species. Some plants and insects have daily clocks, but some have calendars... meaning they can judge the date, and not just the time of day.
------------{=0=}------------
Cicadas clearly possess calendrical clocks, as we all know from their famous cousins east of the Appalachain mountains, who emerge in massive numbers every 7, 11, and 13 years. But as the Wikepedia article I read today told me... even my annual cicadas in Illinois aren't really annual. They're all biding their time down in the ground for two or three years.
So... they don't just have calendrical clocks that can judge the date of the year... but Cicadas can also count the years.
This would seem to lend some credence to my alternating brood theory for field crickets.
Even if they do only stay in the ground one winter, crickets do seem to have calendrical clocks, because they do always wait until August 1st (around here) to hit maturity and start singing, no matter what the weather's been like through the spring and early summer.
Couple that with the fact that the cicadas around here, who are known to have calendrical clocks, also always wait until August 1st (around here) to hit maturity and start calling... no matter what the weather's been like.
So it's not much of a stretch to imagine that field crickets too, could count the years, and could then be on a two year cycle.
But if that were true... why would science not already be aware of it?
I'd argue that they're only aware of it in cicadas because they do have those famous population explosions out east that can't be ignored... so they've just been studied a lot more.
Field crickets, on the other hand, aren't drawing that kind of attention.
I only notice, because I record them every year, and it seems like there are more, and better singers on even numbered years, and we have fewer and lazier ones on odd numbered years.
------------{=0=}------------
However, crickets and cicadas are not closely related. They come from two separate orders of insects. Cicadas are Order Hemiptera, and crickets are Order Orthoptera.
And cicadas are newcomers, only having evolved in the last 2 million years... compared to 250 million years ago, for crickets.
Still, they both have that one thing in common... of singing.
And, they both seem to agree that the best time to start doing that is August 1st (around here).
Why the hell would that be?
------------{=0=}------------
This is gonna sound a bit crazy, but August 1st, is actually one of the four, hidden holidays. In fact it's the one lost holiday of the four hidden holidays.
What the hell are hidden holidays? Well, they're the midpoints between the equinoxes and the solstices. Modern Pagans recognize all eight points as, "sabbats," or, holidays, in what they call, the wheel of the year.
But even the modern secular calendar still celebrates seven of the eight... though some are more obvious than others.
Christmas, clearly, is the winter solstice. Easter, is the spring equinox. We don't have a holiday right on the summer solstice, but in America, Juneteenth and Father's Day are very close, and 4th of July isn't too far away. For the fall equinox, Oktoberfest is right there.
But the mid points are more interesting, because we still have holidays there, but they're far more obscure than Juneteenth, or Octoberfest.
Groundhog Day, February 2nd, is one day after the midpoint between the winter solstice and the spring equinox.
May Day, May 1st, is the midpoint between the spring equinox and the summer solstice. This one used to be celebrated in the western world a bit, until the end of WW2. The old tradition was to make a, May Basket, filled with flowers, and leave it on the door of somebody you loved. Post WW2, the Soviets coopted it as a workers holiday, and it fell out of favor in the capitalist world.
Halloween... directly opposite May Day on the calendar, is of course a huge holiday in America, and celebrated worldwide. It's right there at the midpoint between the fall equinox and the winter solstice, on October 31st. And it's probably the reason why the Catholic Church decided to put All Saints Day, on November 1st.
So Groundhog Day, May Day, and Halloween, are three of the four hidden holidays, but the one I left out is August 1st!.. midpoint between the summer solstice, and the fall equinox.
Not just hidden, it's become a forgotten holiday to most of the world. But modern pagans still recognize it as Lughnasadh, and Catholics, surprisingly, recognized it for a long time as Lammas.
Lughnasadh (Loo-NAS-ah) has Gaelic origins, and was a celebration of the beginning of the harvest season, and the god Lugh. Lammas, meaning, Loaf Mass, was a christianization of Lugnasadh, where people would bring bread loaves made from the newly harvested grain to the church for blessing... to thank God and hopefully guarantee a good harvest next year.
Why dud Lugh's loaf mass get completely erased from the secular calendar? I don't know, but I'd assume it's because most of us aren't farmers anymore. We're wage slaves who all take vacations in July and August, and we don't want any holidays getting in the way of our escape plans!
------------{=0=}------------
Much as I'd love to say it's the magic of Lammas that imbues the crickets and cicadas with their power to sing, that's probably not the case.
But it does remain true that August 1st is the astronomical midpoint between the summer solstice, and the fall equinox. And at my latitude of 41N, it's not only the height of summer, but the part where the air is guaranteed to be at it's most still.
Recall my recent windchime experiments, where a huge balloon sat stationary outdoors, unable to ring the chimes because the air was so motionless.
If you're insect size, and your mating strategy involves acoustical calls... your best bet is to wait until the wind stops blowing.
And by August 1st, that's more or less a guarantee around here... and it will stay that way for two months... where there's still plenty of heat, and plenty of food.
------------{=0=}------------
The fact that Cicadas, who came along a couple hundred million years later than crickets, sing during the day... was probably a way to use the same acoustical strategy... in that same window of motionless air after August 1st, without having to compete with the noctournal crickets, to be heard.
Their long, loud buzzing, cuts through the din of bird chirps pretty distinctly. But they'd probably have a harder time of it at night against crickets, because the acoustical bandwidth is more narrow with insects, and crickets have already speciated to take up all practical bands in that narrow spectrum.
200 million years earlier... when there were no birds... crickets probably evolved to sing at night because of some din we can't imagine, that was happening during the day, with all the proto-dinosaurs.
------------{=0=}------------
My two loners today... one lone cicada, and one lone cricket... seemingly both have clocks that are running a month fast.
And neither one of them is likely to find a mate, and pass on the mutation.
But they do give us a clue, as to how such clocks... even year-counting clocks... could get recalibrated at different latitudes, to time the start of the singing to that optimal moment when the heat is on, but the wind is dead.
------------{=0=}------------
That's all I've got for you today.
A little more than I thought I'd be writing on July 3rd after hearing one single cicada.
Maybe July has more to inspire me with than I think it does.
°¦}
https://soundcloud.com/snoozefestaudio
I was out in the back yard getting some footage of the tiger lillies in full bloom... as they often are by the fourth of July. And it took my brain a minute to tell me, Hey!.. you're hearing a cicada!
That's because when it's 90F and sunny, and you hear that long lazy buzz from up in the canopy, it just fits, and feels totally normal. But in early July?.. around here?... I don't think that's normal.
It was only one cicada, somewhere high up in the neighbor's huge cottonwood tree next door. And it only did the one call. I listened for ten more minutes and it didn't repeat the call.
But listening for that lone cicada, I heard the one lone cricket in the neighborhood that's been hanging out across the street for about five days.
So, I guess this is how it starts... with a couple of loners here and there in early July.
I've been assuming for years that cricket loners in late June and early July are simply displaced visitors from regions south. But for a cicada, that doesn't make as much sense, because they do not travel well.
Cicada's can't jump, can barely walk, and suck at flying. If one falls out of a tree... it's pretty much game over.
I read up on their life cycle. The eggs are laid in the bark of twigs and after they hatch, the nymphs drop to the ground, and burrow down as deep as eight feet, then stay there for two or three years before emerging.
At this point they find the nearest tree, climb the trunk, and do one final molt... leaving behind the famously hollow cicada husk that everybody has seen before! The adult then crawls up to a high twig and hangs out there for the rest of it's life... which is about two months... sucking on tree sap, doing that buzzy mating call.
So, I've got to assume the one I heard today was local. And maybe this means the lone cricket across the street is also local. And maybe both of them are just ahead of the curve, for reaching maturity.
If that's true, then what does that curve look like?
My guess is, it won't be a steady increase from week to week. I'd expect it to be exponential. Not a lot going on for the first three weeks of July, but then a seeming explosion in the final week.
The book I'm reading now, Summer World: A Season of Bounty by Bernd Heinrich, says that the types of clocks used by plants and insects varies between species. Some plants and insects have daily clocks, but some have calendars... meaning they can judge the date, and not just the time of day.
Cicadas clearly possess calendrical clocks, as we all know from their famous cousins east of the Appalachain mountains, who emerge in massive numbers every 7, 11, and 13 years. But as the Wikepedia article I read today told me... even my annual cicadas in Illinois aren't really annual. They're all biding their time down in the ground for two or three years.
So... they don't just have calendrical clocks that can judge the date of the year... but Cicadas can also count the years.
This would seem to lend some credence to my alternating brood theory for field crickets.
Even if they do only stay in the ground one winter, crickets do seem to have calendrical clocks, because they do always wait until August 1st (around here) to hit maturity and start singing, no matter what the weather's been like through the spring and early summer.
Couple that with the fact that the cicadas around here, who are known to have calendrical clocks, also always wait until August 1st (around here) to hit maturity and start calling... no matter what the weather's been like.
So it's not much of a stretch to imagine that field crickets too, could count the years, and could then be on a two year cycle.
But if that were true... why would science not already be aware of it?
I'd argue that they're only aware of it in cicadas because they do have those famous population explosions out east that can't be ignored... so they've just been studied a lot more.
Field crickets, on the other hand, aren't drawing that kind of attention.
I only notice, because I record them every year, and it seems like there are more, and better singers on even numbered years, and we have fewer and lazier ones on odd numbered years.
However, crickets and cicadas are not closely related. They come from two separate orders of insects. Cicadas are Order Hemiptera, and crickets are Order Orthoptera.
And cicadas are newcomers, only having evolved in the last 2 million years... compared to 250 million years ago, for crickets.
Still, they both have that one thing in common... of singing.
And, they both seem to agree that the best time to start doing that is August 1st (around here).
Why the hell would that be?
This is gonna sound a bit crazy, but August 1st, is actually one of the four, hidden holidays. In fact it's the one lost holiday of the four hidden holidays.
What the hell are hidden holidays? Well, they're the midpoints between the equinoxes and the solstices. Modern Pagans recognize all eight points as, "sabbats," or, holidays, in what they call, the wheel of the year.
But even the modern secular calendar still celebrates seven of the eight... though some are more obvious than others.
Christmas, clearly, is the winter solstice. Easter, is the spring equinox. We don't have a holiday right on the summer solstice, but in America, Juneteenth and Father's Day are very close, and 4th of July isn't too far away. For the fall equinox, Oktoberfest is right there.
But the mid points are more interesting, because we still have holidays there, but they're far more obscure than Juneteenth, or Octoberfest.
Groundhog Day, February 2nd, is one day after the midpoint between the winter solstice and the spring equinox.
May Day, May 1st, is the midpoint between the spring equinox and the summer solstice. This one used to be celebrated in the western world a bit, until the end of WW2. The old tradition was to make a, May Basket, filled with flowers, and leave it on the door of somebody you loved. Post WW2, the Soviets coopted it as a workers holiday, and it fell out of favor in the capitalist world.
Halloween... directly opposite May Day on the calendar, is of course a huge holiday in America, and celebrated worldwide. It's right there at the midpoint between the fall equinox and the winter solstice, on October 31st. And it's probably the reason why the Catholic Church decided to put All Saints Day, on November 1st.
So Groundhog Day, May Day, and Halloween, are three of the four hidden holidays, but the one I left out is August 1st!.. midpoint between the summer solstice, and the fall equinox.
Not just hidden, it's become a forgotten holiday to most of the world. But modern pagans still recognize it as Lughnasadh, and Catholics, surprisingly, recognized it for a long time as Lammas.
Lughnasadh (Loo-NAS-ah) has Gaelic origins, and was a celebration of the beginning of the harvest season, and the god Lugh. Lammas, meaning, Loaf Mass, was a christianization of Lugnasadh, where people would bring bread loaves made from the newly harvested grain to the church for blessing... to thank God and hopefully guarantee a good harvest next year.
Why dud Lugh's loaf mass get completely erased from the secular calendar? I don't know, but I'd assume it's because most of us aren't farmers anymore. We're wage slaves who all take vacations in July and August, and we don't want any holidays getting in the way of our escape plans!
Much as I'd love to say it's the magic of Lammas that imbues the crickets and cicadas with their power to sing, that's probably not the case.
But it does remain true that August 1st is the astronomical midpoint between the summer solstice, and the fall equinox. And at my latitude of 41N, it's not only the height of summer, but the part where the air is guaranteed to be at it's most still.
Recall my recent windchime experiments, where a huge balloon sat stationary outdoors, unable to ring the chimes because the air was so motionless.
If you're insect size, and your mating strategy involves acoustical calls... your best bet is to wait until the wind stops blowing.
And by August 1st, that's more or less a guarantee around here... and it will stay that way for two months... where there's still plenty of heat, and plenty of food.
The fact that Cicadas, who came along a couple hundred million years later than crickets, sing during the day... was probably a way to use the same acoustical strategy... in that same window of motionless air after August 1st, without having to compete with the noctournal crickets, to be heard.
Their long, loud buzzing, cuts through the din of bird chirps pretty distinctly. But they'd probably have a harder time of it at night against crickets, because the acoustical bandwidth is more narrow with insects, and crickets have already speciated to take up all practical bands in that narrow spectrum.
200 million years earlier... when there were no birds... crickets probably evolved to sing at night because of some din we can't imagine, that was happening during the day, with all the proto-dinosaurs.
My two loners today... one lone cicada, and one lone cricket... seemingly both have clocks that are running a month fast.
And neither one of them is likely to find a mate, and pass on the mutation.
But they do give us a clue, as to how such clocks... even year-counting clocks... could get recalibrated at different latitudes, to time the start of the singing to that optimal moment when the heat is on, but the wind is dead.
That's all I've got for you today.
A little more than I thought I'd be writing on July 3rd after hearing one single cicada.
Maybe July has more to inspire me with than I think it does.
°¦}
