The cicada sounds of summer

KANSAS CITY, Missouri - Head to the park and you expect to hear the sounds of children playing, but lately another sound has permeated the sound track of summer in the Greater Kansas City metro - the sound of cicadas.

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Candace Grell couldn't help but notice the buzz as she watched her son play at Loose Park.

"They kind of keep me awake sometimes," said Grell.

Alan Branhagen is the horticulture director at the Powell Gardens. He says the species we're hearing now is called the scissor grinder cicada.

"There are different species, but this is one of the loudest and it really gears up at dusk. It's almost deafening at sunset," said Branhagen.

Branhagen says the scissor grinder cicadas come out ever year, but added that good precipitation and hot summers help them perform at their peak. It is an audible performance that is actually a mating call from the male to the female.

"They're trying to attract a mate to procreate, to carry on the species," added Branhagen.

Branhagen says Kansas Citians are just now getting into the cicada summer, which comes every year. He expects the nightly noise to die down in late September.

Branhagen advises Midwesterners to gear up for 2015, when the periodical cicada re-emerges. That species shows up every 17 years by the millions. They literally take over trees and coat the grass with their exoskeletons.

"When the periodicals come, it's literally thousands of cicadas in one tree," said Branhagen.