Cicadas Are Not Locusts
Written on May 14, 2026
To this day, I cannot understand how anyone could mistake cicadas for locusts. A locust is a type of grasshopper. A cicada reminds me of a huge house fly. The only thing they have in common is they're both insects.
There are cicadas in the Philippines, just like almost every other place with a temperate or tropical climate. Unless I'm mistaken, you won't find them in cold climates like Alaska or Norway.
Cicadas in the United States
I grew up listening to the cicadas that inhabited the elm trees on my parents' property and other yards in our neighborhood. It was a yearly cycle, but I can't remember what month the noise started and what month the noise ended.
The elm trees have long since been replaced by other trees, and the noise no longer comes from those yards. Well, at least according to some people still living in that neighborhood.
When I was young, we had cats in our backyard. I don't remember why, but we had a few that just seemed to live there. I think the"mother" of all of them was the only cat that started out as a pet, but the others were just as tame.
Anyway, when the cicadas would land near the bare light bulb near the top of the back door, some of the cats would scramble up the side of the wall to snatch them and eat them.
Our family wasn't poor, but we weren't very well off either. Our family was large, and we couldn't afford expensive toys like gas-powered airplanes. We had to make do with what was available.
I and some of my brothers would tie strings around cicadas and treat them like gas-powered airplanes while spinning in a circle. It was incredible, but the cicadas would fly and buzz and do exactly what we expected them to do.
Cicadas in the Philippines
I didn't know they existed in the Philippines until after I moved to the Philippines in 2006. The cicada noises were coming from some nearby trees, close to my house, as the house was being built.
I didn't know which trees the noise was coming from, and I wasn't inclined to investigate any further. After that, one of my relatives captured a few that flew in near my mother-in-law's front door, where the overhead light was.
He didn't know what they were called in English. When talking about cicadas, many Filipinos call them "ipis", which is Tagalog for cockroach. They are not cockroaches!
"Kuliglig" is the Tagalog word that can mean either cicada or cricket. Well, my relative had fun messing with the cicadas and causing them to reproduce the cicada noises somehow.
Elsewhere
Cicadas have been around for centuries. In some places, they're eaten as a delicacy, with the female being preferred as"meatier". In Australia, there are around 220 species to contend with. I don't know which species is in the Philippines.
Cicadas have predatory enemies such as the cicada killer wasp and the praying mantis. The biggest enemies in the Philippines, as near as I can tell, are the birds that feed on them. I don't know which birds are which, but they're small.
I've seen them snatching and munching on cicadas from my upstairs window because I have a pretty good view of a nearby tree. The only thing I don't like about the birds is when they perch at my window and chirp while I'm trying to sleep.
Image by Noël BEGUERIE from Pixabay