Before the Music Ends

The forecast last night was for temperatures in the mid-thirties. That is getting dangerously close to putting and end to the Orthopteran orchestra. Grasshoppers, crickets, locusts, katydids; they have been the main players and sadly, their days are numbered, at least anywhere where there are four seasons.

In mid-summer it was a deafening band that jammed outside my window from dusk to dawn as males of each species did their best to woo their lady loves over to their patch of grass or bush or tree. It is the males that sing, chirp and buzz for the love of a lady. Now, at least here on the Cape, where autumn is asserting itself more each day, the orchestra is paring down to a quartet, with Black Field Crickets usually being the ones who will play bravely on until the ship goes down with a killing frost.

Now, with any group of insects you chose to discuss, there will always be more information than the average reader would like to know. Sorting out what is most important is the tricky part, especially when you are someone like me who thinks everything about them is pretty fascinating. How to proceed- hmmm.

Let’s start with the music itself. I am sure, when I was young, I thought they made their music by rubbing their legs together. Well, I was half-right. Grasshoppers generally make their buzzy, clicky, snappy sounds by rubbing their leg, which has a file, against their wing, which has a ridge on it. Very much like a fiddle and a bow, whereas, crickets make their more bell-like, musical sounds by rubbing the base of their small wings together. The Katydids of the infamous, “Katy-did, Katy didn’t” fame, like crickets, go wing on wing.
And, just to be different, the Carolina locusts and some others snap their wings in flight to make a sound.

Where and when they sing is another clue as to who is who. Grasshoppers are generally found either in the grass or the edge of fields and are happy to call out throughout the day. Crickets are said to do their best singing at night, as do the Katydids, but once the days get shorter and cooler, you are more likely to hear those males sounding a bit desperate and calling throughout the day too. Katydids call from higher in the trees, as do the Snowy crickets and, not surprisingly, the Tree crickets.

Trying to track any of them down by following the sound can drive you crazy, for many of them are great ventriloquists. A wonderful strategy for fooling their predators, but, must not somehow, fool Mrs. Grasshopper or that would surely defeat the purpose. They are also all skilled at hushing up the moment you step toward them. Well, some go quiet, while others like the Carolina Locust will leap up in your face, flash that band of colors on its wings and hope to startle you, which indeed they do.

Should you happen to catch a cricket or grasshopper you can sometimes tell male from female by looking for an appendage at the base of their abdomen, called an “ovipositor”, for the positing of “ovi’s”- eggs. In the Field Crickets, it is long and slender, in other species it is more like a sword.

Many of them lay their eggs in the ground, something I’d really love to see someday. They props themselves up tripod like on their hind legs, then injects the eggs into the ground, which is often really hard, with this impossibly slim ovipositor. Amazing.
Then, even though Mom is destined to not outlive the fall, her prodigy will remain safely in the ground through winter until the world warms again in spring and out pop the “nymph” grasshoppers and the orchestra will be born anew.

If you ever read your children Eric Carle’s “The Very Quiet Cricket”, the cricket was “quiet” because, until it molts about 5 or 6 times, it won’t have any wings, nor is it sexually mature, so, no singing. All of the Orthoptera go through what we call “incomplete metamorphosis”. A butterfly goes from egg to larva to a pupa (cocoon or chrysalis) then adult. Grasshoppers just go from egg to nymph, to adult- no cocoon. So they just look like cute, tiny, crickets or grasshoppers in early spring.
And that’s why the music doesn’t start right off the bat, no one is mature enough to use a fiddle yet.

All right, truthfully, there are pages and pages more that you could write about them. How they eat, what they eat, those 17-year locusts and what’s up with that, etc, etc. But surely you have had enough for today. We shall leave something for a future telling. Like, how I got my first grasshopper bite while showing one to my granddaughter, but not now. For now, let’s just enjoy the music that remains and when that frost comes, may we bless the eggs within the ground, praying that they make it through the winter to renew the world with music next summer.