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Carolina Curious: Where are all the cicadas?

A female periodical cicada makes slits in a tender branch with the egg-laying appendage called an ovipositor at Morton Arboretum in Lisle, Ill. The slits are to create egg nests that serve as the nursery for the cicada's developing eggs. In North Carolina, the cicada season is winding down. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

A female periodical cicada makes slits in a tender branch with the egg-laying appendage called an ovipositor at Morton Arboretum in Lisle, Ill. The slits are to create egg nests that serve as the nursery for the cicada's developing eggs. In North Carolina, the cicada season is winding down. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

Bill McIlwain of Winston-Salem has a question that’s been bugging him:

“I’m curious about the cicadas that I’ve heard so much about. People tell me that they’ve heard them in Durham and elsewhere in the state. What’s going on?”

In the latest edition of Carolina Curious, WFDD’s Paul Garber tackles this buzz-worthy topic.

So, first things first. We get cicadas every year. This year is special though because our annual group is being joined by a separate brood that only comes out once every thirteen years. 

Their sounds are similar, but they’re easy to tell apart visually says Daniel Greene, an entomologist and assistant professor of biology at High Point University.

“So our annual cicadas, they're going to be green and black in coloration, whereas your periodical cicadas are going to be black-bodied with orange wing veins, and they have red eyes,” he says.

The key to seeing or hearing them is, like

Paul Garber is a Winston-Salem native and an award-winning reporter who began his journalism career with an internship at The High Point Enterprise in 1993. He has previously worked at The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The News and Record of Greensboro and the Winston-Salem Journal, where he was the newspaper's first full-time multimedia reporter. He won the statewide Media and the Law award in 2000 and has also been recognized for his business, investigative and multimedia reporting. Paul earned a BA from Wake Forest University and has a Master's of Liberal Arts degree from Johns Hopkins University and a Master's of Journalism and Mass Communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He lives in Lewisville.

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