Every year in the dry season the trees start screaming. It begins as a buzz, rises to a whine, becomes an electric roar in the afternoon heat, and then stops dead, all at once, as if someone pulled a plug.
Where you’ll see it
You will not, much. They sit high on trunks and branches, perfectly camouflaged, and go quiet when you get close. The empty brown shells clinging to bark at head height are the cast skins of nymphs that climbed out of the ground to become adults.
What to know
Only the males sing, using a pair of ridged membranes on the abdomen, and the volume is an honest attempt to be heard over every other male. Nymphs spend years underground feeding on root sap before emerging. Adults live a few weeks, do not feed much, and cannot bite or sting.
The chicharras are the soundtrack of the dry season and the sign it is ending is the day you notice they have stopped.
