Nambour Chronicle and North Coast Advertiser (Qld. : 1922 - 1954), Friday 1 March 1935, page 12


STRANGE CICADAS.

The big tree cicadas, known to children as locusts, are still loud in the trees, shrieking their summer song in a way that cannot he ignored. Only the males are responsible, for the fe-males are dumb altogether. Many a "double-drummer," "floury baker," and "green monday" are smuggled into school to startle a whole class

room with their strident screeching. These are fairly common cicadas, but there are about 200 Australian kinds altogether, and many are quite small some very quaint, and some really sweet of voice. The little, "fiddler," a dark brown insect with yellow spots, might he called musical, and many a quite pleasant, chirp comes from a small cicada, not from a cricket as might be supposed. In Queensland the extraordinary

bladder cicadas have the abdomen rounded at the end; and greatly inflat-ed, one big species being distinguish-ed by a pretty green body and dark green front wings, which are not transparent. Victoria boasts a hairy cicada, in this case the male being mute and the female the musician. Cicadas have strong beaks for suck-ing sap. and they do further damage by slitting bark when laying their eggs.