What does a cicada sound like?
In the montane rainforests of China's Yunnan province, insect life is abundant and loud. There are several species of cicada, but the atmosphere isn't always saturated with their calls. Much like other mountain cloud forests, there are big gaps in the soundscape over the course of a day/night cycle. These gaps make it easier to hear and record the sounds of individual cicadas.
In a lowland rainforest there is a continuous wall of sound that permeates everywhere, so any recording captured in such an environment will likely include this shrill cacophony as well. Luckily that is not the case in cloud forests because of the lower temperature that forces animals to conserve energy and as a result to call less.
As dusk falls over the forested valleys of Gaoligong mountain, there is a tentative start to the insect chorus. It's this fleeting moment that allowed me to record an individual cicada. Just moments after I captured these calls, its friends joined in and the soundscape became a continuous and deafening shrill chorus. Nothing wrong with that, and the contrast can be palpable.
On a more general note, what fascinates me about cicada sounds is the endless variation in the textures and patterns they produce. Listening to them is one thing, but looking at a spectrogram or even waveform is very revealing. What I like about the animations I add to my wildlife sound series is that they also shine an interesting light on the frequency makeup of these calls.
Recorded in the humid cloud forests on the border between China and Myanmar with Zoom F3 and O-Mini P48 mics by Chris Trevino. Enjoying the videos I upload on here? Feel free to support me by:
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