Tales from the garden: Cicada bonanza!

Or why I failed to do the gardening on my day off

December 2025

I am often distracted by the wildlife around me, even when I have jobs to do. That's why I have over 7,500 observations on iNaturalist. In late November it got to the stage of ridiculousness. The day after my return from Sydney, where I saw some beautiful butterflies, I took the day off work. Whilst I was away, Auckland had stunning weather and everything in the garden grew. That's the new plants and the weeds. However, my plan to reverse some of chaos of the garden beds never eventuated.

It was the fault of the cicadas. Mostly. As I have detailed previously I have an interest in cicadas and I recognise a fair number of the Auckland-based ones by sight and by song. I've identified many online I've never actually seen myself. In the other cicada blog post I wished that this garden, with all the amazing wildlife it has already hosted in our year here, would perhaps give me an opportunity to see some more varieties. I didn't expect that wish to come true, but I had more than one surprise that day.

April green cicada

I fetched all the gardening tools early in the morning and got to work, because the day was already warming up. It started with a cicada song I didn't recognise from the griselinia hedge. I recorded it and kept looking until I spotted a bright green cicada with two narrow sickles on its back. I listened to the song against Te Papa's recording and it matched the April Green Cicada, Kikihia ochrina. There is a rare, very similar-looking cicada, Dugdale's cicada, but there is no recording of its call held by Te Papa and I can't hear the recordings on iNaturalist. I have ageing ears and some cicadas, like that one, sing at frequencies that only the young can hear. I was called young by a pleasant man in New World the other day, but he was 85 and it doesn't count.

A juvenile tui then caught my attention and I had to put the trowel down again to take photos of the cabbage white butterfly and the native bees that were enjoying the nectar on offer. I'll post about bees separately, but suffice to say they are many and varied - definitely worth recording.

Then I could hear the 'skip-skip-skippety-skip' call of a male Lesser bronze cicada a few minutes later. I got up and looked for it, but couldn't see it. I first heard one at the beginning of November, having been familiar with them from Linley Reserve, Hillcrest. Last summer I only saw and heard clapping cicadas, chorus cicadas and clay bank cicadas in the new garden, so hearing this species again was wonderful.

Then about 11:30 I heard another call of a cicada I didn't know. I recorded it and compared it to Te Papa's recordings. Turns out it was a Greater bronze cicada Kikihia cauta. They are not meant to be out in November, according to the site, and are usually high up in trees - this was only about 2.5m off the ground - but the 'umm zit it' of its call does not sound like any other cicada.

Greater Bronze Cicada seen by local iNaturalist user autsquidlab

No sooner had I put an ID against the recording on iNaturalist, then another new cicada song started up and I recorded that too. This song was low to the ground and there on the grass was an orangey cicada. The coastal cicadas - redtails - can have similar colouring and we are only half a kilometre from the sea - but again the song was distinctive. Te Papa describes it as 'zee zit zit zit zit', but what I hear is 'wah ha ha ha ha', like a hammed up comedy laugh. This is the song of the variable cicada. I have IDed many of these online as they are the only Auckland cicada that looks burnt on its dark markings, but this was the first I had seen in person.

An alternative colour form of the variable cicada

When the clay bank cicada started singing a short while later, I felt things had actually got ridiculous. Three new cicadas in just a few hours and two others all competing for my attention (well, the attention of their females, but whatever). The garden was only marginally less weedy than when I had started early at 8am and I reckoned if I was going to actually achieve anything that day I would need to go inside. What a morning though. A cicada bonanza!

You can find all my observations and recordings of cicadas on iNaturalist.