Large brown cicada: The hot midday voice of summer

At midsummer noon, cicada song seems to fill even the air, and the main voice is often the large brown cicada. With a brown body and transparent wings, it perches in a tree and sings at full volume — the most familiar "soundscape" of summer. Let's meet this midday singer.

Its body

The large brown cicada is one of Japan's commonest cicadas. It carries a pair of big transparent wings and a brown body. The most unusual thing is its voice: only the males sing, because the male carries a "drum plate" pair at the base of its abdomen that buckles hundreds of times a second, while its hollow belly acts like a soundbox and throws the call far. So the cicada song we hear is really a male playing a tiny abdominal drum.

The female is silent. She uses a sharp ovipositor to lay eggs in twigs.

Where it lives and what it eats

Cicada nymphs spend three to six years underground, sipping root sap with their piercing-sucking mouthparts. On a summer night the nymph climbs out, mounts a trunk and moults from its shrivelled skin as an adult. The adult lives only a few weeks — just enough time to sing, mate, lay eggs and end its life.

A note for grown-ups

You could look on the ground with a child for the empty "shells" of cicadas: those transparent casings are the outfits the nymphs left behind when they emerged. Knowing it spent years underground for just a few weeks of singing turns a simple observation into a moving story about waiting and living.