Video by Mary Free, Extension Master Gardener
Birds chirp and male cicadas sing as a Brood X pair mates on a young native Acer rubrum (red maple) on May 31, 2021. On the same tree, a female has made a slit in a branch with her sharp ovipositor and pulses her abdomen to push eggs through the ovipositor shaft still embedded in it. Background voices are from the playgrounds of the Fairlington Community Center. The second part of the video features a female Brood X cicada laying eggs in the third nest that she created on the branch underside of a mature Abelia shrub on May 26, 2021. Besides the din of the cicadas, around the one minute mark, wings rustle as more cicadas land on the shrub. For more information, read the text accompanying the picture gallery posted earlier: Brood X Cicadas Mating and Creating their Egg Nests. Video © Mary Free