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Cicadas, including the dog day cicada, are one of those bugs everyone has heard but few people have seen. Seeing one may go unconnected with the insect's name because there's no sound.

These true bugs make long buzzing sounds from atop tall shade trees, particularly during hot, dry summer days.

Jerry Davis

Male cicadas sing from tall trees during the long, hot days of August and September, but are rarely seen.

Different species call at different times of the day and for different durations.

Males, not females, call. The sound attracts both males and female to a location where the males continue to call and eventually females will mate with the males.

The females lay eggs, which hatch and drop from the trees, go underground for a period of years, and then emerge.

Sometimes cicadas are dubbed locusts, which they are not.

These bugs feed on plant juices when underground nymphs, and when adults, too, when they are perched in trees.

While we can't see cicada's song-making machinery, it's a hollow cavity toward the end of the insect that has a structure like a drum head membrane, which vibrates because it is attached to muscles. 

There are at least 25 species of cicadas in U.S.