Nymphs crawl a foot or more up tree trunks, weeds, or other upright objects where adults emerge leaving their nymphal skins behind. The process of shedding a nymphal skin is completed in an hour or less. The periodical cicada is now an adult, but it is soft and white. In time its exoskeleton hardens and becomes darker. During some years, practically all of the population in a brood from a forest may emerge on the same night, or on two or three different nights.
Adults are rather clumsy fliers and often collide into objects during flight.
The sound made by adult males is sometimes haunting and eerie. About 10 days after emergence, females will mate and begin depositing eggs in twigs and branches of nearly 80 different preferred species of trees and woody shrubs. They usually do not deposit eggs in coniferous trees. Generally, the female will deposit 400-600 eggs in the twigs of their preferred species. Using the blades of a sawlike, egg-laying device at the end of the abdomen, the female punctures the bark of the twig and makes a pocket in the wood.