Chirping
cicada : a welcome to GR
As
we arrived to Grabov Rat at the peak of summer, first week of
July, the chirping sound of a cicada sitting on the wall of our pojata
(cottage) was greeting us. A very load sound, with high rate of
chirping. They say that some cicadas produce sounds up to 120 dB,
among the loudest of all insect-produced sounds. Cicadas like heat
and do their most spirited singing during the hotter hours of a
summer day.
To
tell the truth, at first I thought it’s a cricket. That is,
until I consulted an insect guide and learned the difference in
their appearance and sound "instruments". The cricket’s
chirp (which only male crickets can do) is generated by raising
their left forewing to a 45 degree angle and rubbing it against
the upper hind edge of the right forewing, which has a thick
scraper; this sound producing action is called stridulation
and the song is species-specific. Male cicadas have loud noise-
makers called timbals on the sides of the abdominal base,
the regions of the exoskeleton that are modified to form a complex
membrane with thin, membranous portions and thickened
"ribs". Contracting the internal timbal muscles produces
a clicking sound as the timbals buckle inwards and return to their
original position.
Anyhow,
cricket’s chirping always reminds me of the poem Cvrčak
(Cricket) by Vladimir Nazor, famous
Croatian writer, translator, and politician. But then, I’m not
an exemption, practically every Croat knows by heart his famous
onomato- poetic line of verse:
I
cvrči,
cvrči
cvrčak
na čvoru
crne smrče
meaning ‘a chirping, chirping cricket on
the knot of a black spruce’, the verse which teachers of the
Croatian language often foist on foreign students studying
Croatian. Try it!
Tsvrchi,
tsvrchi tsvrchak na chvoru tsrne smrche |