Saturday, October 16, 2010

Cicada rescue!


Well what a surprise to find this cicada today- I think he has been tricked into coming out by the recent warm weather, poor thing only to find the weather was FREEZING today! We had snow for most of the day, and so my husband 'rescued' him from our front garden, he swears it was shivering!



Look at those amazing golden wings!

 
Alien-like face, strangely compelling!

Anne from Loopity Lou and Jacqui from Life in the Dome have both found these recently - and I'll trust both their opinions that this is a 'Masked Devil' cicada. Anne has some amazing photos of hers hatching (is that the correct term for cicadas coming out?) I just did not expect to see any this far up the mountains, this early in the season.


 
 

We brought him inside to warm up a little. He was pretty lifeless for a while, then started to move just a little. By the time he was getting quite lively, I thought it might be better for him to sleep in the garage tonight (rather than rattling around the house when we are trying to sleep!)
He can get out of the garage easily, but if he is still there tomorrow, hopefully we can find a suitable home for him again.
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3 comments:

Anne said...

Amazing photos....:)

I've never seen this type of cicada before this season. I asked my dad, who is really into wild life, what sort it was. He googled it and found this amazing link on cicadas. When I went to visit my folks a week ago there was a photo of one with the name "Masked Devil". I get the masks bit but I couldn't figure out why the 'devil' until I looked at your photos. If you look at the segment on its back you can see two little triangles that look like devil's horns.

My camera is a tele-photo, not a macro. My other camera died. Dad gave me his Nikon D70 which is wonderful but at the moment I can't afford to buy a macro lens to fit it. That's why the photos on my blog are from a distance. I would have loved to have had macro pics of the cicada coming out of its shell.

Wasn't that snow yesterday crazy.

beautyfulworld5 said...

wow that is neat. i use to think most bugs were just disgusting... ahh the pains in even typing that! well, keep up the good work with this inspiring, silly blog and happy thursday!

Unknown said...

this is a yellow monday. You are very lucky to get one so early in the year becos last year there were so few. I also live in the Blue Mountains and love cicadas. Thanks for posting these pics!