Cicada

I had a visitor to my back deck this afternoon, one whose raucous call demands immediate attention.  Entomologists say they make the noise with a set of tymbals at the base of the abdomen that can produce loudness up to 120 decibels, which can be irritating to the human ear.  If you have ever heard one, you will never forget it.

These cicadas are found all over the eastern United States and there are more than 1500 species of them.  I don't think this one is the 17-year cicada, Magicada septendecula,  since it doesn't have the red eyes of that species.  This is the time for them to emerge in this area, but I haven't had that wailing, pharoah, pharoah, pharoah sound males make to attract mates.  It would probably take an entomologist to positively identify the many which inhabit our woods. .

The size of this insect, about an inch and a half long is impressive, and the markings are really pretty.  When I was growing up in rural North Carolina, people called the cicada a "jar fly."  I suppose the sound is loud enough to jar someone awake if he were dozing in the afternoon sun.




Those transparent wings with the lines seem almost
drawn. I guess the most noticeable feature of the
cicada are the wide-set eyes.  The purpose would
seem to give it great binocular vision.  At first glance the wide-set eyes reminded me of the hammerhead shark.

I have heard them calling in mid-summer and the call would be broken off to a kind of desperate clicking making me think that a predator, perhaps a bird or a cicada killer, a large wasp, had captured it.