Cicadas are Provence's official insect. They are the sound of summer around these parts. It's somewhere between a chirp and a squeak. I think it sounds like very loud, buzzing, live electrical wires.
You can even buy recordings of their sounds for your own garden. There's an Australian cicada whose sounds have been measured at 158 decibels. The same noise level as a grenade going off.
The Provencal cicada is an audible thermometer. It starts chirping when the temperatures rise to 72 F. And not before.
The female lays between 300 and 400 eggs which spend anywhere from three to six years underground. When they hatch, the adults only live for a few weeks. Doesn't seem quite fair, does it?
I have come to really enjoy these insects' noises.
hhhmmm, enjoy wouldn't be the word I would use. I swear that no matter where I am , Italy, France, Mexico, all 400 eggs will hatch and chirp about 6 feet from my bedroom window. In a minuscule village in Mexico I had to sign language to a pharmacist to get ear plugs!
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