Summer sounds

Another beautiful summers day, today is a day of editing photos, hopefully I can get just about finished, but it is a process that takes a bit of time and many hours, while I sit here and work away, I can hear the song of the cicada's, which is one of the many sounds of summer.

Cicada

Not the prettiest of insects, but when you look at them closely the colours on them are beautiful, and sometimes you can even see a rainbow in their wings. I song of the cicada is from the males singing calling out as a mating call for the females, the females respond with a clicking sound that you can hear when close to them, but unlike the males they don't sing. To the human ear, and presumably to some predators, it often is difficult to tell where a cicada song is coming from; the pitch is nearly constant, the song sounds continuous to the human ear, and cicadas sing in scattered groups. If a singing male becomes alarmed on the approach of a possible enemy, it softens its song so that the attention of the listener gets distracted to neighbouring louder singers, creating confusion. They are quite fascinating insects really they spend most their life under ground feeding of the sap in tree roots, depending on their specie will depend how many years they live underground, but once they emerge and come above ground they have about 2-4 weeks before they die, and their time above ground is really only to find a partner mate, and for the females to lay eggs.