Posted on 05/14/2011 10:39:34 AM PDT by decimon
ATLANTA (Reuters) – Traveling through a rural part of the U.S. state of Georgia recently, Charles Seabrook heard a high-pitched whirring so loud he thought the engine of his pickup truck was overheating.
"I was getting ready to raise my hood when I realized that I was hearing the 13-year cicadas," said Seabrook, a Georgia writer and naturalist.
Throughout the U.S. South and as far north as Illinois and Indiana, a noisy and bizarre insect ritual is playing out for the first time since 1998. After living quietly underground for 13 years, billions of red-eyed cicadas -- dubbed the "Great Southern Brood" by scientists -- are emerging to mate and quickly die.
"The most common description I've heard is that it's an alien invasion," said Nancy Hinkle, a University of Georgia professor of entomology. "It sounds like the mother ship is hovering down in the woods."
The insects are called "periodical" cicadas because they remain underground for years at a time, unlike the annual cicadas that surface each summer. There are also 17-year cicadas found largely in the Northeast and Midwest, Hinkle said.
"The periodical cicadas are about 30 percent smaller than the annual cicadas," said Hinkle. "And periodical cicadas have bright red eyes."
Commonly mistaken for locusts, they don't bite and aren't harmful to humans or crops.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
The cicadas were operating in full voice on parents' and students' orientation at Texas Tech University in 1979. I have never heard such a sound. The trees positively shrieked and vibrated. I think it was August.
We went camping in South Dakota last year in the middle of the summer. The wife found it hard to sleep, because of the lack of cicada noise!
I can deal with the Cicadas, it’s the damn frogs that are driving me nuts.
Drain the swamp. ;-)
I refuse to notice that. ;-)
Someone on another thread is saying it’s a sign that the end of the world is upon us.
Everything is a sign that the end of the world is upon us.
Do you use dead Cicada”s.
How do you know hol long they have been dead, does it matter?
Here in Jersey we get them in August - September - we always called them locusts. They are loudest on the hottest days. Sounds like a buzzsaw.
Might it have been 2004 instead? That summer, I went to visit family in Virginia for a couple weeks and they were all over the place and as loud as they could be. In 2005 I was living in NJ and don’t remember them being as you describe.
Yes, it was 2004 — back to school time — craziest sound I’ve ever heard — hot and humid day — mid-day actually. Just heard it in one area of Princeton, NJ -
That’s protein.
Cicada shells in a cigar box....brings back memories. Thanks!
I thought it was one of the fans in the pc going, so I spent time
checking and oiling the suspect fans, and it didn't help.
I finally zeroed in on a partially open window The noise was cyclically
intermittent, so it couldn't have been too many.
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