I was in the yard talking on the phone with a friend when all of a sudden the constant drone of cicadas in the treetops abruptly changed pitch.

The grating sound emanating from the treetops was so overpowering that the voice on the other end of the line was silenced in comparison.

Squinting skyward, I found the cause of all of the commotion. One of our region’s smaller birds of prey, a colorful sparrow hawk, was swooping around the top of a large oak tree, scaring cicadas into flight, and then snatching them out of the air for an easy meal.

I cannot describe the cicadas’ alarm call using only words, but rest assured that the clamor is significantly more annoying than the insects’ general racket.

For the last several weeks I’ve been pulling cicada shells off of window trim, coaxing live ones out of my truck with ink pens, and listening to the giant bugs as they flutter and bang around in the aluminum rain gutters on the house.

Cicadas carry the reputation as the loudest insects in the animal kingdom, and I don’t believe it is a title they are going to lose anytime soon! In fact, simply take a moment to listen; many of you will be able to hear the cicadas’ lovesick chant as you read this.

Although a couple of thousand different varieties of cicadas exist throughout the world, those of us in southcentral Kentucky only have to deal with a few kinds.

Annual or &#8220dog day” (since they arrive during the dog days of summer) cicadas are what we are generally accustomed to, but in recorded increments of 17 and 13 years we are also graced with the presence of the smaller, more brightly decorated, periodical cicadas.

To many folks these periodical cicadas are known as &#8220locusts” because they often emerge and congregate in great numbers, but they are not related to the true grasshopper-like locusts that swarm and ravage the landscape.

I believe that the last large-scale occurrence of periodical cicadas around here occurred in 2004, and the next predicted scattered emergence for them is not until 2008.

What makes this bulky insect so unique is its lengthy lifespan.

Even the green and black annual cicadas that are out buzzing around right now operate on two- and five-year cycles. Dog day cicadas simply are not synchronized like the periodical cicadas, so we encounter them as they near the end of their existence each and every summer.

The nymphs burrow their way to the surface after living off of plant roots for years and climb onto a stationary object.

From this point they molt their hard exoskeleton, which are the light brown shells that can be found attached to anything from a toy scooter to a mailbox right now, and wait for their new set of wings to dry and fill out before taking to the canopy.

The newly morphed cicada’s sole purpose at this stage is to find a mate before it expires. Only males have the ability to &#8220sing,” and thus their incessant daytime chattering is done to lure in the opposite sex.

If you happen to run across a dog day cicada, either hitchhiking a ride on your shirt or involuntarily wedged beneath your windshield wiper, take a moment to study it. At the base of the cicada’s wings are two white spots called tymbals.

These tymbals are the mechanisms responsible for the cicada’s amazingly loud chorus.

Cicadas’ thoraxes are fairly hollow, so as the tymbals vibrate, their lower bodies act just like the sound chamber of an acoustic guitar and amplify the noise.

After finding a suitable partner, the female cicada will deposit her eggs on a tree limb, where they will stay until the young nymphs hatch weeks later.

After hatching, the nymphs fall to earth, tunnel down into the soil, find a plant root to feed on, and make themselves comfortable for possibly as little as two years if they are of the annual variety or as many as 17 years if they are the periodical type.

While annual cicadas rarely do much damage to vegetation, the sheer numbers and slightly more invasive egg-laying procedure of the periodical cicadas can sometimes harm young trees and plants. During the months of cicada activity, just about any predator feasts on the little bundles of protein.

Lately I have witnessed cats, song birds, ducks, one hungry puppy, and of course the sparrow hawk munching on cicadas. I would bet that if a person outfitted himself with a set of earplugs, weighted some six-pound test really well, and placed a lively cicada on the end of a hook, the results in a warm farm pond would be dynamite.

Nevertheless, I am going to stick with a black and green jitterbug and leave the live-bait experimentation up to someone else. My inner ears could not handle that revolting alarm call twice in one week.

– Geordon T. Howell is the outdoors writer for the Daily News. Contact him at highbrasshowell@yahoo.com.