When periodical cicadas emerge, they’re consumed by just about anything that eats insects. Mammals and birds, amphibians and reptiles, and fish all eat cicadas — and benefit from the glut of them.

For wildlife, he said, cicadas are a bonus food source. “They’re packed with protein and fat. They’re really a good food ...

Known for their deafening mating calls, which can be as loud as lawnmowers, cicadas emerge after more than a decade underground, offering a tasty meal to birds—and even the occasional human.

Songbirds are too small to eat them, but in the birds and animals that are large enough to eat cicadas, Skvarla said, “there are much higher success rates for raising offspring, for surviving ...

Periodical cicadas, on the other hand, are gone by the time cicada killer wasps come out. Pretty much everything from birds to deer to chipmunks eat periodical cicadas, Kritsky said. "There's so ...