There are no firm rules for what makes a good chorus center — when adults congregate to mate, leading to concentrated song and activity — Dana said, but cicadas tend to prefer older neighborhoods with undisturbed soil and trees, which is why they aren’t seen as often in the city. Males often gather on one tree to amplify their signal, causing a louder noise in certain places.

“If you take an individual (periodical) cicada and listen to it, it’s pretty quiet … but a brood can sound over 100 decibels,” Dana said. “The reason they’re that loud is there’s so many of them singing at the same time.”

A last hurrah

The country roads from a Monticello gas station to Springfield are lined by a tranquil sea of agricultural fields, punctuated by dense, old woodlands that have been trilling and buzzing with the songs of periodical cicadas in recent weeks. The Springfield area is the epicenter of the cicada emergence this year because it is the only place in the country where both broods are coming out in the same region.

At Sangchris Lake State Park, a few minutes southeast of Springfield, Stephen Bradley, a former professor of visual arts, carried a green-lidded critter keeper toward his cabin. A sound like pattering rain accompanied the loudly chorusing treetop cicadas.

Summer humidity hung in the air, but the sky was clear.

The sound was coming from other cicadas that Bradley was catching and placing gingerly onto a makeshift drum. As they crawled around and buzzed, their movements vibrated through the drum and a contact mic, playing gentle beats over an amplifier.

“I’m also an experimental musician, looking at collaboration with critters,” he said.

“I’ve been here by myself, pretty much just absorbing, inventing things, interacting with the cicadas,” he said. It was a final artistic indulgence, a last intellectual hurrah, after his recent retirement and upcoming move to North Carolina.

After a week and a half, leaving the state park would be bittersweet, he said.

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