Cicada

Yes, they are related

In the snow? or is that white bark? They are certainly much easier to spot against a light background.

it's paper towel, M. ;-) I brought this pic forward from a few years ago. We have the cicadas but not the katydids.

great pic, nice of it to keep still for you!

A bit less prosaic. ;-))
Thanks to your chicada i did some googling and to my surprise i found that we actually have a native chicada in the uk! The New Forest Cicada (Cicadetta montana).
We lived just at the edge of the New Forest for 15 years and i never knew!!

As I recall, for it was at least 5 yrs ago, it was on the sidewalk and Mandy ran to sniff it. She didn't try to taste it, just sniffed and looked at me quizzically. It might have fallen from some tall oak trees or crawled out of leaf mould in the forested area very close to the place we found it. I seem to remember that they spend a very long time in metamorphosis, mating, laying eggs and dying within a very short period. This poor thing was very sluggish and I thought that it was about at the end of it's time. I left it on the paper towel, on the deck, and came back later to see that it was gone. It may have crawled into the garden and died or flown off to another tree...

Doesnt look 17 years old. Wears its age well.

as I understand it, the larvae (if that's the right term) spend years underground waiting for the right weather to turn into adults, mate and lay eggs, to start hte cycle all over again. makes me wonder if an adult is just the larva's way of producingmore larvae

That's interesting. The cicadas come out in summer, here. I've never heard one or seen one during winter, though.

Lori, you're so lucky you don't have katydids. They are so destructive! I'm constantly killing them because they grow very large because they eat every plant in sight.

Whats worse ( I read) Is in soucal like Santa Barbara,the tropical Walking Stick- the big insect we've all seen in nature films has naturalized. They say they eat everything and those big body's eat a lot of that!
Its part of the last four year run of warm weather they said that has allowed them to establish. No doubt escapee's originally from an exotic animal collector.

I'm glad I haven't seen any walking sticks! I get enough with the many giant locust and large katydids and some other bugs I don't like to mention.

The drought has allowed the walking stick to proliferate? D1~ the cicada was sitting on a piece of paper towel!...no they only come out in the hottest part of the summer. That's the way we knew, as kids, that it was going to be a scorcher... the cicadas would be whirring away in the tall trees. We called them Sawyer-bugs because they sound like a whirring sawmill. we don't have katydids but we do have smaller versions called chaffers. They like roses.

Lori:

I'm guessing the stick bugs are multiplying in Santa Barbara because the unusually hot weather the last two winters. I know here in San Diego we've had hot weather like we see during the middle of summer. Some of the nights were even hotter than we typically get in summer.
It's extremely rare or unheard of to get night time temps at midnight in the low 80's in early to mid-February or March. This year we had upper 90's in late February and March.

Four days ago, our long range forecast trumpeted that winter was finally over and today we would have temps of 18 degrees C. Well, guess what? We had snow yesterday with arctic winds..today the winds are out of the west and blowing like a hurricane. we're getting March winds! there is still snow in the bush...and lots of melt water to deal with. It's still very cold..about 6 degrees C. my poor garden.

In California Lori we all use irrigation water since it never rains in summer. So,those giant insects were feeding on artificially watered garden plants like Roses- Surinam Cherrys . Anything common or exotic.

The Drought's warm provided cold free habitat to the young ones too.
Up here,the biggest insects are non native Praying Mantis. Cool looking things. Those I just enjoy as they are rare AND- get this,Tan-Brown. All those back east are green!.

Lori:

It seems like you're getting it all. Hopefully, you're weather will calm down and you'll get some mild weather soon!

I can't imagine such weather. We complain about our weather when it changes from warm to cooler weather...however, we don't get the extreme changes.

Stan:

The praying mantis here are tan-colored because they have to blend into our dry, dying plants. LOL!