During the New Zealand summer, hot weather brings the cicadas out in force. They make a noise not unlike a cricket’s chirp, but it’s more or less constant – and loud. You hear a lot of them wherever there is greenery – the sound is very distinctive, but the cicadas themselves can be quite a mystery as they’re often not obviously visible.

Coming from the UK, I had no idea what a cicada actually was – I had heard them in NZ many times but had never managed to see one, until the other day. I was cutting the grass and was getting dive-bombed by what I thought was a black moth. It flew up and landed on the gazebo, so I walked over to take a closer look. It was resting and had some friends with him.

I grabbed the camera and took a pic.

I counted six cicadas on our gazebo – they stayed still and chirped loudly together for a while. Once I knew what I was looking for, I managed to see a whole lot more of them, on tree trunks, branches and even clinging to the outside walls of our house.

If you want to hear what they sound like, I took a short video too. Watch a cicada chirping on Youtube.

I was brought up in the UK, where Christmas is rarely white (in the Bing Crosby sense), but it’s usually cold and gloomy. I recently moved to New Zealand where the seasons are reversed (so December is summer) and I have to say I am having a bit of trouble adjusting to summer weather at Xmas time.

A lot of ‘traditional’ Christmas imagery is oriented towards Northern Hemisphere weather conditions – snowy fir trees, holly, even Santa with his welly boots and warm get-up are all a bit alien when it’s 25 degrees and sunny outside.

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