Originally uploaded by Mean and Pinchy.
I just glanced as I walked toward the creek, and thought this was another crayfish burrow, but then I realised the dirt was loose, not packed, and there was something inside. I poked gently with a stick to tease the critter out and saw that it was a cicada nymph (dog day harvestfly…or not, depending on what page I’ve read), just emerging from the ground. I’ve seen lots of adult cicadas, and hundreds of empty exos still clinging to trees, but this is the first time I’d ever caught one just as he was ready to emerge. (Must be a Gentoo user. “emerge cicada”.) If he’s the one I’m thinking of, he sounds like this. When I first came here, I thought they were some kind of machinery off in the distance because the only ones I remembered hearing back home sounded more like this.
In my efforts to ID this cicada, I also finally found a name for the brown, grasshopper-y critters we’d always called “sandcrackers” back home. They’re called Carolina grasshoppers, Dissosteira carolina, and they’re common throughout North America. Cool, though, since I’d wondered for a long time what they were. I can’t find a sound file for them, but I do recall thinking that Rafe the Lazy (striped raphael catfish) made a sound very much like it when he was disturbed to be moved to another tank. Sort of “cricket on steroids with a head cold”. 🙂
