Here’s a bug you don’t see much this time of year.
My son dug up this pea-sized grub when trying to fix an irrigation leak.
When it is upside down you can see the beak it uses to feed on tree roots. It is so tiny, that is a bit of acacia flower next to it.
In this view you can see the claws on the front legs that it uses to dig through the soil.
Perhaps next summer it will crawl from the earth, attach to the side of a tree, emerge as an adult, and leave its exoskeleton behind like this one did.
For more information on cicadas:
Another sequence of cicada nymphs
Cicada wasp with adult cicada photograph from this species
