thelope.com - Tibicen pruinosus cicada singing and crawling; good side view

A Tibicen pruinosus cicada sings at a rest stop along I-70 in Kansas, near Paxico in August of 2007. This will be used in a story at http://www.thelope.com in the summer of 2011. In the meantime, check out our site for other cool stuff.

Category:

People & Blogs

Tags:

• insects
• cicadas
• Tibicen
• pruinosus

[sunshine19967]

what kind of cicada is it??? i hear the same thing but i don't know what kind of cicada

[acejackalope]

@sunshine19967 The species of cicada is listed in the title. This is Tibicen pruinosus, an annual cicada. It's common right now in the Midwest. It has a close relative in the east and southeast. In what city are you located?

[phillyP84]

This is the cicada sound i was looking for for the last 2 hours, i thought it was a bird sound i was after, then it struck me, i was looking for the wrong species.

If anyone finds out what type of cicada this is, please mail me, I always hear it on movies and I love it, beats the sound of traffic noise i can hear at mine

[acejackalope]

@phillyP84, this is Tibicen pruinosus, an annual cicada common to the Midwest and Southeast (at least). There is a sub-species or related species (relationship seems in debate) called Tibicen winnemana or Tibicen pruinosus winnemana that looks and sounds almost the same and exists in some East Coast states. I've learned a lot about cicadas since I first posted this and really need to update titles and descriptions - I think I'll do that for this one right now.

[phillyP84]

@acejackalope Nice one, i'll see if i can find a 3 hour video with this sound in the backgrond, thank you for the fast and in depth response :)

[acejackalope]

@phillyP84 , three hours might be a really long stretch for them to sing, so you'll probably have to stitch together an audio recording that long. They usually begin at dusk and finish when it's actually dark. They start showing up in mid-June in the Midwest U.S. and die off in October. In your search terms you might want to include "pruinosa" as that name, with the feminine "a" ending, was the species name until a recent nomenclature change. "T." is often used instead of the full genus name.

[sunshine19967]

in texas, but they sound slower

[judgeman21]

sounds like he's rapping, yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah hmmm....

[pdutube]

Awesome, I love their sounds! Looks like it's hanging out on a mesquite tree?

[epb471]

@cicadafan Tibicen pruinosa