Cicada (Double Drummer)

Description:

The double drummer cicada is mostly brown with a black pattern across the back of its thorax, and red-brown and black underparts. The male has large dark red-brown pockets (tymbals) on each side of its abdomen—the ‘double drums’—that are used to amplify the sound it produces. This one was newly emerged. The second photo was taken about 40 minutes earlier, and the typical markings had not yet appeared.

Habitat:

Found in sclerophyll forest, adult double drummers generally perch high in the branches of large eucalypts. They emerge from November until March and live for four to five weeks. They appear in great numbers in some years, yet are absent in others.

Notes:

It is arguably the loudest cicada, possibly the loudest insect in the world. It is certainly the loudest insect in my back yard.