The cicada is the size of a five cent coin, and was spotted by a local in a creek bed at Parma Creek Nature Reserve.

The rare species had only been spotted in the Royal National Park and Blue Mountains areas before the recent find, and environmentalist Nathan Emery said he was shocked the cicada had been seen on the South Coast.

“A Nowra local discovered it and posted about it on a Facebook page asking people to identify it, and straight away I thought hold on, I know what that is,” he said. 

“This was the first time one has been spotted since about 2013, when it was found near Leura in the Blue Mountains.” 

The cicada was then delivered to Mr Emery via the post. 

“It survived the post and we took some nice photos,” he said. “It was great we were able to get it because it’s important to get a physical record of such rare species.” 

The cicada was first discovered by Mr Emery’s sister Samantha at the Royal National Park. 

“It had been quite frustrating day for Sam leading up to that,” he said. 

“She’d missed a few cicadas then looked down to see these two tiny little things on a spinifex leaf.” 

Samantha was lucky enough to catch both the male and female insects and found they had never been discovered before. So they were given the scientific name Samaecicada Subolivacae, in honour of Samantha. 

Mr Emery first became interested in cicadas by force, but it very quickly became one of his passions. 

“When we were really young my dad used to take my siblings and I out to the bush to catch cicadas,” he said. 

“It was a bit of a competition between us to see who could catch the most and impress dad.” 

These adventures out in the bush led Mr Emery to study environmental science and plant ecology.

Since the red-eye fairy cicada’s most recent sighting, Mr Emery encouraged people to keep an eye out for the tiny creature. 

“We still don’t know a whole lot about them,” he said. 

“We’ve never heard the male call song but we imagine it’s very soft and of a high frequency due to its size.” 

He encouraged other insect-lovers to take part in the great cicada blitz, to monitor and identify other large species. To take part visit inaturalist.org.