Metamorphis

A word that I loved when I was a kid, I have no idea why but I think it sounded intelligent and grandiose, it embodied something that to me seemed fantastical, that a living object could change into something else almost before my eyes.

I’ve been fascinated by those aspects of the animal kingdom ever since. The fact that things morph into something else, or that chameleons and stick insects can change their pigment to better blend into the environment to stop being eaten, that somethings emit UV light that we can’t see and others create their own bio luminance. It’s debated if Owls can see Infrared which was a concern to me when setting up the in-nest box cameras, but they seemed to be ok with them. I suspect that these days their night is filled with infrared beams, and lights and that their whole environment has changed rapidly over the past 15-20 years.

I can imagine that for them it must be like flying through a labyrinth of beams similar to some Hollywood, laser security system.

A new Cicada

This dodgy, late night iPhone photo shows a freshly emerged and very tired Cicada.

Cicada tend to start chirping or singing once the temperature stabilises above 20 degrees celcius. And so at this time of year here in NZ the days and evenings are filled with their song.

Their exoskeleton’s can be found everywhere, it reminds me of a Hugh Fernley-Whittingstall episode where he went diving for large crabs which accumulate at a particular time of year to mate, as there is a fair bit of fighting the remains of their shells, legs etc. are strewn across the sea floor. The Cicada exoskeleton’s are no different, but I started to think I would love to create a timelapse of them emerging so I set up one night where I had seen a fair few number of discarded shells on a tree and spent a few hours making my timelapse. The timelapse didn’t quite work out as well as I had hoped and so I need to take another pass at it, but I managed to get some decent images which I’m pretty happy with.

The colours of the freshly emerged Cicadas are nothing short of stunning, which is a vast difference to their normal appearance which is a drab mixture of black and grey, however if you can get close enough to one before they take flight you will still see some of the iridescent green and yellow on the body.

A discarded Cicada exoskeleton on the trunk of an Oak tree

The above image is one I’m most proud of, I enjoy lighting and being able to have the time to fiddle with the lights etc while filming a living creature is great fun. It takes a few hours for these insects to complete the metamorphosis and so there’s a reasonable amount of time to get things looking how you want.