BBQ and cicadas

After my days birding (see earlier post) we went next door for a BBQ.
Our neighbours Alan and Jen are great and the children just love them.
They had prepared little party bags for each of them - but not the normal bags. Instead each was given a small bag of polished gem stones and an empty bag with an invitation to "raid" the gem boxes round the back.
I should point out here that Alan and Jen along with Jens parents have over the years collected and polished hundreds of gem stones which have fascinated the children since day one. To say the children were excited would be an understatement and here are a few of the best that they chose

Interspersed with adult conversation, couple of glasses of wine, fresh caught fish and the richest homemade sloppy chococalte pudding I have eaten in years (we provided salad and some of the wine I hasten to add) the kids went lamping round the garden with Alan and found a superb selection of beasts - spiders, frogs, geckos and their eggs and a couple of stunning looking antlions...

One of the commonest things they found though were these cicada cases - made as the adults emerge from the ground and shed their larval case

there were literally hundreds of them on the trees and walls indicating that big numbers were emerging at the moment possibly due to the wetter weather that is starting at last.
Eventually they even managed to find this adult that had just finished emerging but had not dried out yet

We meant to take it home and keep it in a box outside so that the children could see one fully formed but much to Tish's relief we forgot t take it with us when we left - well it was 9pm!
Luckily (or not depending upon your point of view) it didn't matter as when I went out side this morning I found two fresh adults to show the children

It is amazing to think that these beasties no more than a couple of inches long can produce a noise that drowns out bird song!