Favoritos de rvignarajah

Very disgruntled male caught giving quick flashes in sequences of up to 9, with about 0.7 seconds in betweeen flashes.
75 degrees F.
Less than 5 miles from the type locality
Habitat: riparian forest adjacent to the Potomac
First iNat record

Same site as observation by Aaron Reb.

Habitat: freshwater interdunal swale, the habitat this species specializes in.
Description: double green flash characteristic of this species. Double flash repeated every 4-6 seconds. Flash is often longer than the pause between flashes, unlike P. fairchildi. 2 males were caught and photographed. Will upload them separately.
Only other firefly species noted at the site was P. salinus but only 1 individual was found. P salinus gives a yellow flash every second in a series, but this was not observed in any bethaniensis.
Second image is condensed from a video of 2 flash series

Second Male caught and then released.
Habitat: freshwater interdunal swale, the habitat this species specializes in.
Description: double green flash characteristic of this species. Double flash repeated every 4-6 seconds. Flash is often longer than the pause between flashes, unlike P. fairchildi.
Only other firefly species noted at the site was P. salinus but only 1 individual was found. P salinus gives a yellow flash every second in a series, but this was not observed in any bethaniensis.
Black marking on pronotum widens towards the apical margin but does not reach it, which is apparently unique to bethaniensis. About 10 mm in length. Sternites 1-4 are black, trailing edge of 5 is white and the entirety of 6 and 7 are white. This differs from P fairchildi in that in P fairchildi S4 is almost always partially white.

Date is approximate. 3 individuals (2 males & 1 female) seen sometime in April, 1987. My mother and father (@dmpeterson ) were living in Monteverde in the spring of 1987, staying with the Gavin family. I have been digitizing their old slides, and thought these ones were significant, so I uploaded them. The date and location are approximate, based on their best recollection.

This is a problematic cicada! Though clearly cassinii (that's all that has emerged in my location), it has an aberrant orange patch behind its right eye. The patch extends onto the pleura, and (interestingly) there is an orange patch on the right side of the head as well, between the eye and the cibarium (photo 5). This casts a little doubt on septendecim IDs made exclusively based on the presence of thoracic patches, and reinforces the importance of side + underside shots for ID.

I'll be interested to see if I encounter any more like this one; it may be a rare aberration.

Found this “blue-eyed” cicada the last Brood X year (2004, now 17 years ago). The eyes was definitely more blue in person, but they were still pale. I remember we had heard on the radio they (god knows who, honestly) were offering a million dollars to anyone who found one with the trait, but I was a budding pacifist and didn’t want them to kill it for display (perhaps, indeed, identifying with the bugger due to my own eye coloration)— so we just took these pictures and let it go. Honestly I can’t believe it’s a cicada year again. What a trip.

Taken on monthly Birding on Broadmeade group walk on Lake Creek Trail in Williamson County in northwest Austin.

Two small Blotched Water Snakes were hunting minnows in the creek near the third low water crossing. At first we wondered if this was one snake with two heads, but finally one head moved somewhere else.

1.5 – 2 cm wide holes, some capped with mounds (2nd photo, mound flipped over in 3rd photo). First observed Sunday morning, May 2, with more appearing on Monday morning, May 3. Localized to a small corner of the park next to a large Platanus × acerifolia tree.