Lat night, I was walking my dog when a loud, loud-pitched buzzing sound approached close to my ear…much like that of a bumble bee. (FYI: Smaller bugs have a high-pitched sound.) Could this have been my first cicada encounter?
I have no prior knowledge. I do live in the Mid-Atlantic region, but I heard it won’t start until May (early? late?) Well, maybe this bug didn’t check his calendar!
Tell me all I need to know but was afraid to ask about the 17-yr cicada, locust, katydid, leaf hopper, and/or grasshoppers? And, what are the differences, anyhow?
Jinx, I’m thinking that what you heard was probably not a cicada. It’s very early in the year to be hearing them. Unless it was an exceptionally warm spring, where you are.
Cicadas–also know colloquially, but erroneously, as locusts and katydids–climb out of the ground, shed their skin (in big cicada years you can see these brown shells on tree trunks and fences; they’re harder to find where I live, where cicadas don’t really proliferate as they do in the southwest). Once they’ve staked out their territory in a tree branch (usually), the males pretty much stay there for the duration of their lives, four to six weeks at the max, if they are not caught by a cat or eaten by a magpie. Their calls attract females, and the females come to them, but it’s my understanding that the females don’t sing.
They can fly, but not far. (They have really lovely wings, but their bodies are relatively heavy–like bumblebees.) There are lots of great sites that explain what they look like, how to tell which broods are hatching where in a given year, and how to distinguish them from actual katydids, which are a different bug altogether. There is one site dedicated to singing bugs, but I can’t link to it because I’m currently experiencing a pop-up spyware meltdown; if I get that fixed I’ll try again later. One site that has a good picture is www.desertusa.com/mag98/july/papr/du_cicada.html
