buzzy boy

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Swamp cicada (Tibicen chloromera) on the 
finger of a human (Homo sapien)

The dog days of late summer wouldn't be complete without the buzzy drone of the annual cicadas. As best as I can tell, we have five different species in my area that sing at different times of the day, although there is a fair amount of overlap. Each look slightly different and each has a unique raspy song, so like with birds, picking out the individual arias is the key to identification.

The black-bodied one I'm holding is swamp cicada, so named because of their apparent fondness for low-lying wetlands but I seem to hear them all over: wetland or ridgetop. (As I write this, there is one chortling away overhead.)

Elliott and Hershberger describes their call as "Begins with soft buzz that gradually changes into a pulsating drone that increase in volume to a crescendo, and then gradually tapers off before ending abruptly." The song lasts between ten and fifteen seconds.

For the winged adults, time is short, they do not eat or have need to or have want to, reproduction is the only thing they have on their modest little circadian minds, which they do quite successfully in a cacophonous, hot frenzy every August and all the Augusts for millennia. 


Recommended reading: "The Songs of Insects" by Lang Elliot and Will Hershberger. BUY this book! You'll love it!


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