It’s a cicada year right now here in NY, which means we hear them during the day and see them around. Just the other day on a walk we found a green grocer sitting on a tree after just emerging from his shell. I like cicada’s; always have and always will. This is mostly due to growing up in Australia, where many of our summers seemed defined by the annual cicada season.
Compared to what I have seen in America, the cicada numbers in Australia were (are?) off the scale. Here you hear their sussurus from the trees enough to know they are there, but in the ‘worst’ of Australian seasons the noise was so loud you had to yell to be heard. I can remember one particular summer back when I was at St Josephs school in Charlestown, where we had a veritable plague of cicadas.
We used to catch them in those days, and keep them as sort-of pets. I recall them being strangely docile, and you could just walk up and take them off the trees. We’d walk around the playground with them sitting on the front of our shirts, or in our hair, and the more you had the better you were. I can remember teachers forbidding us from bringing them into the classroom, in which case we’d put them in our shirt pockets. If they sung, the sound was amazing up close. And even if the singing was from inside the classroom it wasn’t always because some child had snuck one in since they had a tendency to fly in windows or through doors themselves.
I recall taking shoeboxes to school and collecting them inside. Ideally we’d want one of every type, and we’d trade between each other. The secondary goal was the biggest or prettiest of each type, and bonus clout was awarded for having a excellently intact (or extra large) shell. I can recall keeping them in fishtanks at home, with wire on the top and branches inside. They never lived very long, but were so common during their season it was a matter of 10 minutes tops to get more.
I said to KLS during our walk the other day that were we in the Australian bush during a busy season, I could obtain for her a cicada in seconds, and I meant it. I was a fan that loved them dearly, and I was skilled at catching them.
Uniquely to Australian cicada fandom are the names. We had special names for all of them, and no true collector would get them confused.
The most common was the ‘black prince’. I’d say 70% or more of all cicadas were these guys. They could get very large as well; I’d say 4 inches or more. The biggest cicadas anyone ever caught were black princes. They were simple to spot: mostly black with wonderful red gemlike eyes.
< Black Prince
The second most common was the ‘brown baker’. Mostly brown, with some mottling on top. Nowadays these are more commonly known as ‘floury bakers’ (although maybe my name was a Newcastle thing). Apparently they have a particularly loud song.
< Brown Baker
The third most common (and one of the most beautiful) was the ‘green grocer’. Guess what – it’s all green! These guys got big as well…
< Green Grocer
I was a particular fan of the rarer types, such as the ‘yellow monday’. These are all different species incidentally, not variant colourations of the same species. These guys were tough to find, and you’d be lucky to find one or two a week. Highly valuable they were in the cicada trade!
Some of the variants were difficult to tell at a glance, and it would require a (10 year old) expert to differentiate. Always a boy mind you – girls hated cicadas! Two such variants are the ‘cherry nose’ and the ‘double drummer’.
The cherry nose looks just like a black prince albeit with a bright red nose:
< Cherry Nose
The double drummer on the other hand resembled a brown baker (or black prince, in bad light) but has subtle colour variations. The main difference though was it’s sound – it was louder and less rythmic than other cicadas. Sometimes you’d have to get them to sing (stroke their bellies) to identify them.
< Double Drummer
That image doesn’t look much like a brown baker I realize. I do recall however that double drummers strongly resembled another type.
There were others as well. Super-rarities, like red cicadas or blue ones (google ‘blue moon cicada’ for some amazing photos) or weird examples, like half-green half-yellow types. You’d see these maybe once a year if that, and it was always frustrating to see one but not be able to catch it!
The creative names are, as I have just learned, quite unique to Australia. Of the worlds 2000 types of cicada, 220 are found in Australia. And yet Australia has far, far more ‘common names’ for cicadas than any other country (most just call any type a ‘cicada’). Some of the most common names, such as black prince and green grocer, date back to the 19th century and are attributed to early Australia kids, who were apparently loving and collecting cicadas well over a hundred years before I ever did 🙂
I draw your attention here to this post, to show that even now when I visit Australia I keep my eyes out for these wonderful little guys.
I do recall walking through the bush and seeing the trees completely covered with thousands of Black Princes. The noise was incredible. Even at home with all the doors and windows closed it would penetrate. It used to really annoy at times.
Other times you wouldn’t notice it at all unless it stopped. There’d be a sudden silence and you’d wonder what caused the thousands of cicadas to stop singing. Then it would start up and you would not be able to ignore it again.
I recall the Yellow Monday being very rare, You could see Black Princes by the thousands before you’d see a Yellow Monday.