Katydids

Another loud summer insect is just starting to emerge:  katydids.  They are also covered in Songsofinsects.com.  I'm talking about true katydids, although there are others in north GA--in August I hear what I think are red-headed meadow katydids singing mid-afternoon in the tall grass at the place I go running.  The nocturnal katydids are raucous and will become much more numerous in the coming weeks.  I heard one of the first this morning when walking the dog (at 5 am).  Their numbers will dwindle throughout the late summer and into the fall, but I often hear solitary ones some nights all the way up until a few days before Thanksgiving when it's warm enough.

These bugs are not particularly cool.  But they fill the night with sound, and they're starting to make their presence known.

Cicada Time

Ok, so this is a little random.  One of the cool summer insects we have in Georgia is cicadas. Probably almost every part of the country has at least one variety.  While nowhere near as cool as fireflies, they're pretty fun.  They have just started to emerge in the last couple of weeks, and now can be heard singing throughout the day (different species sing at different times, and they pretty much shut up after dusk when other loud insects come to the fore).

As probably everyone knows, they spend most of their lives underground, then emerge at dusk one evening once they've grown enough and the soil has warmed.  They climb a convenient vertical surface, split their skin, and pop out as an adult.  By dawn, their wings have unfurled and dried, and they fly off, to spend a short time in the trees looking for a mate.

We don't have the periodical cicadas where I am, but we have a number of varieties that are present every year.  Cicada songs can be heard at Songsofinsects.com (I have no affiliation with them, but if you like the page I hope you buy their book--I did).  According to the individual species pages, there are several varieties that should be here, and I think I've heard a lot of them (Hieroglyphic, Swamp, Scissor-Grinder, and Northeast Dusk-Singing for sure [the name of the latter suggests they shouldn't be here, but their range does extend this far south]).

So this evening while I was out moving a soaker hose (drought is my constant companion), I saw this individual heading for my apricot tree.  I have no idea what kind it is, and I'm not going to stay up as late as I would have to tonight to see it emerge.  I did that once when I was in junior high school, but work intrudes now--as do mosquitoes.

There are a few downsides to life here in the summer (every season has pluses and minuses)--so it's important to enjoy the nice things.

Edited to add:  I guess I wouldn't have had to wait long, after all.  I went out to shut the soaker hose down and looked for the cicada--it was getting close to dark (at the end of  'civil twilight') and was about 45 minutes after the above picture was taken.  The cicada had reached its final spot and was already most of the way out of its shell.  I snapped this, then left it alone to finish its emergence.