It’s rainin’….wee!

Summer is officially here. The sound of cicadas ‘singing’ tells me so. The loudest cicadas around now are the Australian Redeye Cicadas (Psaltoda moerens), pictured left. After spending years underground as a nymph feeding on the sap of tree roots the adult emerges to spend its brief time (a couple of weeks) above ground singing and sucking.

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The ‘singing’ is a mating call made by the adult male cicada by flexing its abdomen. When large numbers of males congregate the noise can be quite deafening particularly if the sounds starts beating. If you are in such an area simply look up. The cicadas will be attached to the side of smooth barked eucalypts, pictured right.

Adult cicadas feed on the sap of trees. From the sap they extract the proteins and other elements needed to grow and then eliminate the residual as waste. If there are large number of cicadas in an area the ejected waste  can feels like rain if you are walking or riding beneath where they are feeding.

And they apparently taste good too. Redeyes are a food many of our large honeyeaters like the Blue-faced Honeyeater pictured below.