I love cicadas, I have been trying to learn their songs so I can tell them apart. The problem is, I can almost never find one. They tend to stop singing when you’re nearby. I got lucky this morning and had one on a window, but does anyone have any advice for how to find these elusive little guys so …

The vast majority of my cicada photos were taken at night after they came to a light source. Including a couple of Neotibicen I took last night. Look around street lamps or lit up buildings, ideally near a wooded area where you’ve heard them calling during the day. Edit: 8 more tonight.

I don’t necessarily have any advice for finding them other than just digging into the leaves in bushes and trees, but I’ll point out that cicadas are pretty clumsy. They fall out of trees all the time, even when they are healthy. All the insectivores get an easy meal when there are cicadas out.

A telephoto lens is a big help. Where I’m working we have a lot of them (I’m in SE Asia). They often stop calling if you get too close, but if you keep a bit of distance and look carefully you’ll often see them sitting on tree limbs or branches. Occasionally they’ll fly to a new location. With s…

Does anyone know if cicadas respond to playback by moving towards the sound? If so, maybe you could record them, then play their song back to them.

Yes! I did that when I was a kid with a handheld recorder. Walked around under the trees for who knows how long, letting the sound play at max volume, and eventually had at least one that flew down and landed on my shirt. I still have that cassette tape somewhere.

I wish Okanagana did this. @silversea_starsong has some of the best cicada photos of western taxa on iNat. He’d be a good person to ask.

It takes a ton of patience, but you can sneak up extremely close to a singing cicada if you are super slow, quiet, and do not use jerky movements. Take a couple of minutes to move a foot closer. I have caught them by hand this way, and can use the macro setting on a digital camera. This observation…

In some species the male sings and the female goes to him, in others the male sings and the female lands nearby and starts snapping her wings and then the male approaches her. I’ve read that machinery such as saws will attract the periodical Magicicada species, but also that snapping your fingers wi…

I used to have a camera that recorded decently, but it just did video. I downloaded an app today that is supposed to record sound via my cell phone but I haven’t tried it yet. I love their sounds, but I want to get to see them… Oh! I’ve been looking at the wrong time of day, then. I’m usually out m…

Photographing Cicadas

Nature Talk

gmontgomery August 26, 2020, 7:26am 8

Very cool – I’ll have to try that sometime!

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Photographing Cicadas

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