The Deafening Sound of Cicadas

If you’ve ever been by a major frog pond at night and you hear the loud chirping, then you will have a good feel for what it is like to stand in a beech forest and hardly hear yourself think over the overpowering sound of thousands of Cicadas putting out their song. It really is an amazing experience to be in a forest of these things, not to mention the absolutely incredible fishing that can be had when these large bugs are flying in the air and landing on rivers. Opportunistic big browns are always waiting to smash them on the surface of the water. We’ve now got to experience a few of these kind of days here. We walked our way down to a river and found a few crazy looking old trees covered in mosses and other living vegetation just alive with these bugs. We took the time to take video and photos. At one point, I was standing taking in my surroundings as Dave was using the camera to shoot footage on another tree and I got to watch a spider that had taken a cicada three times its size in its web and was starting to work away at devouring this huge bug.
Because these bugs are quite fascinating to me, I decided to do a little Google search to find out a little more about them. If you are curious, here is the scoop.
They make a song through the clicking if you will of their tymbals, which is a membrane on the lower part of their abdomens and apparently it is only the males that make a sound. The neat thing is that they live underground from 1 ft to 2.5 meters as nymphs feeding off of tree roots, then they build a tunnel to the top when they are ready to hatch. They typically grow from 1- 2 inches long (although, I have learned in Malaysia they can grow up to 6 inches long and are considered quite a delicacy- Yikes!) Cicadas feed off of the sap of trees and the females cut slits in the bark of tree branches and lay their eggs in them. There are 38 species in New Zealand that are endemic to this country and the fish love them. So, find a hot sunny day in summer here on the South island and you will often have some good success with these bugs on a river if the sound of them drowns out every other sound around you. Except you, of course, when you tie into a 9 pound brown!