This brood is orders of magnitude larger than the others. I grew up in Maryland and I don't think I've ever seen a cicada up close except for now and 17 years prior. Sure I heard them sometimes in the summer, but this is something else.
Yeah, but it's patchy. There's a couple big trees down the block from my house where each one has hundreds of those exoskeletons on them, there's literally a carpet of the exoskeletons around them. While my backyard has 6 trees and I've yet to notice even one out there. I've seen a few dozen live ones, but all seem to be freshly matured. Most of them didn't have their wings fully unfolded yet, and haven't seen a single one flying or heard a single one calling.
I’m in MD as well... there’s a big maple tree in my yard that’s attracted probably hundreds of them at this point, lots of holes in the ground around it from when they emerged, but they haven’t started singing yet, or even moving tbh. And hundreds is a lot, but not “covering the entire tree” by any means. Just a surprisingly large number of giant, docile bugs in the corner of the yard.
