Grasshoppers, katydids and cicadas are among the many insects who make sound to advertise for mates.
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Hi. This is Scott Fitzpatrick from New Hampshire Audubon, bringing you Something Wild.
Have you ever wondered what's making that ever-present buzzing, whirring sound of summer?
Most of us are familiar with the chirping of crickets, but lots of insects fill the warm air with noise as they advertise for mates.
The colorfully named sword-bearing conehead is a large, pale-green grasshopper. It lives in wheaty fields and marshes, and at night, the males make chirping sounds by rubbing their wings together. A group of males may even synchronize their songs.
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The common meadow katydid is one of our loudest. These insects also create sound by rubbing their wings together. The males, which look like slender grasshoppers, call day and night from meadows and roadsides to attract females and defend their territory. Males will fight with other males singing on their home turf.
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The buzzing of cicadas are synonymous with the dog days of late summer. These insects are among the loudest in the world. Some species are even louder than motorcycles.
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Cicadas generate noise with specialized sound-producing organs in their abdomens, called timbals. There are many species, but the lyric cicada is one of the most common in this area. You can't help but hear it calling through the trees.
With all the noise created by insects during the summer, it's hard to believe that we're hearing only a part of the show. Many songs, or parts of songs, are outside the range of human hearing. They're either too low or too high in pitch for us to hear.
For Something Wild, I'm Scott Fitzpatrick.
Something Wild is a joint production of New Hampshire Audubon, New Hampshire Public Radio, and the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests.
If you have a natural history question that you would like answered on Something Wild, e-mail us at somethingwild@nhpr.org.
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