Here they are! It is finally hot enough for the cicada choir to crawl out of the soil and shake our senses with their sunlight-made-into-sound, a concentrated celebration of a dozen years of Tennessee’s lush photosynthesis.

Early in the morning, they start with the waaaa-oo waaaa-oo chorus call from the treetops. As the day heats up, their raspy courtship calls dominate, interspersed with the wing-clicking of females.

You can hear both the ghostly waaa-oos and the louder rasps in this recording that I made with a Zoom H4: