Singing insects' swan song

Here in Ohio, nighttime temperatures have plummeted and that, coupled with ever shorter days, have stimulated the onset of a riot of color. There is nothing like the explosion of fall colors in the great eastern deciduous forest, and we're nearing the peak in central and southern Ohio. Here, a pair of Jack-in-the-pulpit fruit clusters brightly punctuate a forest floor littered with fallen ash leaves.

The increasingly cool evenings are putting the kibosh on the fantastic fall symphony of singing insects, and I always find it a bit depressing when these charismatic fiddlers begin to wane. We're soon to enter winter's dormancy, when the singing insects - and nearly all other bugs - disappear. They're there, often in egg form, but out of sight and out of mind.

I managed to find and photograph quite a few Orthopterans ("singing insects") this summer and fall, and following are a few pictorial highlights.

This Differential Grasshopper, Melanoplus differentialis, is an Orthopteran, but it isn't really a "singing insect". Grasshoppers make rough blatting sounds with their wings that are termed crepitations. It isn't really very musical at all. The singing insects featured below are far more melodic. They also make music with their wings, but in general their sounds are far more pleasing to the ear than the crackles of a grasshopper.

A Black-horned Tree Cricket, Oecanthus nigricornis, on Canada Goldenrod. This stunning cricket is frequent in goldenrod meadows, and sings during the day.

One of the more melodic of our evening trillsters is the Broad-winged Tree Cricket, Oecanthus latipennis. This male is in full song. To sing, tree crickets raise their wings perpendicular to their body, which forms a translucent fan. He then rapidly vibrates the bases of the wings together, which rubs the file on one wing against the scraper of the opposing wing. Voila! Beautiful music! The expansive wing surfaces act like the cone of a stereo speaker, booming the cricket's trill forward. Move a bit to the side of the singer and the song dims noticeably; stand right in front and the volume greatly increases.

Orthopterans are tough and adaptable. They've been here for nearly 300 million years. That's WAY longer than humans (ca. 200,000 yrs). I suspect the songs of insects will still serenade the landscape long after we've managed to overpopulate ourselves out of existence.

This is a female meadow katydid (unknown species) snacking on the grains of grease grass. Orthopterans, at least most of them, eat plants and often common readily available fare, hence their abundance.

A Curve-tailed Bush Katydid, Scudderia curvicauda, on the browning leaf of a redbud. If you wish to find and photograph singing insects, you'll want to head out after dark. These animals are mostly nocturnal, and can often be easily found and approached at night.

A Fork-tailed Bush Katydid, Scudderia fasciata. teed up and singing atop a thistle. This is a large insect, but it creates a rather inconsequential song of one or a few zip notes. People are often surprised by the size of the insect, after first hearing the feeble song.

I was delighted to encounter a meadow in Adams County this September that was full of interesting Orthopterans, including many of these. This whimsical looking beast is the Common Virtuoso Katydid, and it has the most ornate song of any of the singing insects. CLICK HERE to hear one.

If you couldn't hear the entire song of the Virtuoso Katydid at the link above, you're not alone. Many of the notes of this species, and other Orthopterans, are at a frequency that is beyond our hearing. Part of this species' song is a soft pleasant shuffling, and that component of the song jumps out to me, and that's how I find them. Many of the Virtuoso's notes are apparently beyond my ear's capabilities.

Most people have no problems hearing Lesser Anglewings, Microcentum retinerve. They're quite loud, and create a castanetlike shuffling sound. They're also drawn to nightlights and often appear on door screens and walls around porch lights.

A personal favorite is the coneheads. Yes, coneheads. That's really what this group of bullet-shaped katydids are called. Coneheads are hardly melodic, but their songs are usually distinctive and in the case of several species, ear-splittingly loud. This is a Round-tipped Conehead, Neoconocephalus retusus, a common species of grassy roadsides and meadows. CLICK HERE to hear its loud trill, which sounds like a shorted out electrical line. It may ring a bell.

Visual identification of coneheads is aided by inspecting their namesake cone. Round-tipped Coneheads have a glossy black line cresting the front of the cone.

This conehead is probably the loudest of them all. It is the aptly named Robust Conehead, Neoconocephalus robustus. CLICK HERE to listen to one. These sound files come from The Songs of Insects, an epic book and website by Wil Hershberger and Lang Elliott. Here's what they have to say about the Robust Conehead: "Can be heard more than a thousand feet away! At close range, it becomes painful to listen to. One would think that the insect would burst into flames from the friction produced from creating such an intense song".

In tight on the greenish unmarked cone of the Robust Conehead. The powerful mandibles - just under the leg - are formidable. Coneheads eat lots of hard seeds, and have the jaw power to deal with such things. I've handled many of them, and they can put a bit of pinch on the soft flesh of your fingers!

This is the Sword-bearing Conehead, Neoconocephalus ensiger. It creates a loud shuffling quite unlike the two previous coneheads. Around here, this species along with the Round-tipped Conehead is a common duet along grassy roadsides at night. The animal in the photo is in full song. It basically "fluffs" its wings and rapidly rubs the translucent areas at the front of the wings together to make its music.

Just a handful of tough singers are hanging on, and even they will soon be gone. I still hear the jerky sputterings of Carolina Ground Crickets, wheezy chirps of Striped Ground Crickets, and the slightly more melodic trills of Allard's Ground Crickets. An occasional grating crackling of a Round-tipped Conehead still issues from the grasses, and the ubiquitous Jumping Bush Crickets give occasional chirps. By and large, the symphony is in intermission until next summer, though.

Bugs with bayonets

The Orthopterans are in fine fettle right now. That big "O" word refers to our "singing" insects; the chitinous six-legged sound machines that create the beautiful nighttime melodies that reach a crescendo on late summer evenings. Crickets, katydids, coneheads, trigs, anglewings - these bugs create wonderful songs by rapidly rubbing their hardened file-scrapers together.

At least the males do - the females don't sing. They've got more important tasks. The beautiful little cricket above is a handsome trig, Phyllopalpus pulchellus, and it's total insect art. Burnt red and deep ebony, it looks as if the cricket was waxed and then shellacked. They're common, too, singing right now in a bush near you. But note the posterior end of this particular animal. It looks like someone mounted a sword to it.

Whoa! Here we've got a sword and a half; a true bayonet! It looks like this round-tipped conehead, Neoconocephalus retusus, could run a man through. Fearsome appendage to be sure, but the conehead and the aforementioned handsome trig are females, and the spikelike accoutrements are ovipositors. They use them to inject eggs deep into protective plant tissue. Many a person has stumbled into a female katydid or cricket, and been awed and a bit frightened by the size of its "stinger".

This is a common true katydid, Pterophylla camellifolia, and it is about as whimsical and Dr.Suessish as an insect can get. These large leaf mimics are probably the most conspicuous nighttime insect singers out there, the males creating a loud raspy KAY-TEE! KAY-TEE-DID! The animal above was adding to the nocturnal symphony, as it is a male - note the roughened brownish area on the forewings. That region is its stridulatory area and the point where the katydid's wings rub together to create its distinctive sound.

Photo: John Pogacnik

This is an amazing photo, and the sole reason I slapped this post together. John Pogacnik sent this image along today, of a female common true katydid that he caught in the act of ovipositing. John and his son were strolling around his Lake County yard, seeking creatures of the night, when they noticed the katydid high up on a tree trunk.

Common true katydids are also armed with large bayonetlike ovipositors, like the other Orthopterans in this post. Thanks to John's photo, we can see why these unnaturally large structures come in handy. The katydid is working her ovipositor deep into the bark of this tree, and once she has drilled to an adequate depth, she'll inject her eggs. Sort of like insect fracking, but the results are good.

Ensconced deep within the plant tissue, the katydid eggs will be insulated from the ravages of winter. Come spring and warmer weather, they'll hatch and young katydid nymphs will make their way into the world and commence growing, molting, and growing ever larger. By this time next year, the fruits of this hardworking female katydid's labors will have come to fruition, and her offspring will contribute their tones to the great singing insect wall of sound.

Singing insects and the people who love them

At last weekend's Midwest Native Plant Conference, we featured a good bit about "singing insects". Why? Part of our purpose with this conference is to educate and inform about the value of native plants, and there is a distinct aural dimension to native flora.

One of the most pleasing dimensions of warm summer nights is the chorus of various insects. Possibly no more conspicuous symphony of sound exists that is so widely heard, but so poorly understood by most people. Our job was to help conference attendees better recognize the interesting little musicians that make the nighttime music.

The Friday night scene outside the front doors of the Bergamo Center. This may be the world record crowd for a singing insect walk; if you know of a larger assemblage gathered to look for nighttime insects let me know. I counted about 90 people.

The gentleman above may be the best friend the chitinous wing-rubbing crowd ever had, and Wil Hershberger is a big part of the reason that so many newbies to the world of the Orthopterans were gathered in the dark on that warm Friday evening.

Wil had just delivered the Friday night keynote program, on singing insects and his sensational book The Songs of Insects, co-produced with Lang Elliott. This talk is one of the very best programs on any aspect of natural history that I have ever heard, and I've heard a lot. I will make a completely unabashed plug of the book, too, which is easily the best effort on this group of insects ever. The Songs of Insects is worth having for the incredible photography alone, but it is also packed with wonderful information about these insects, many of which you have in your yard and are singing right now. And the included CD will allow you to identify them!

So out onto the richly vegetated grounds of the Marianist Environmental Education Center we went, flashlights in hand. Our ears were filled with the wonderful sounds of many wings being rubbed together, producing a diverse symphonic chorus that we began to dissect. Common True Katydid, Greater and Lesser Anglewings, Two-spotted and Davis's Tree Crickets, Jumping Bush Crickets and many more sang all around. Ironically, the showy little beast above is an apparent non-singer, the Restless Bush Cricket. They use cues other than sound to find one another.

As our mob worked its way down to the meadow, we began to hear the strident rasps of coneheads, which are always crowd-pleasers. We sought volunteers to head into the brush to capture some of these oddities, and conference co-organizer Randy Lakes and Nina Harfmann of Nature Remains proved particularly adept at ferreting out the charismatic little beasts.

Pictured above is a Slightly Musical Conehead, and that's a fair name. The most pleasing of the insect singers are probably the crickets, which hold their wings up over their back as they fiddle, producing clear melodic tones. Coneheads emit incredibly loud extended crackles that sound like electricity snappling through an uninsulated wire.

One of their lot, the Robust Conehead, is so loud that its song pierces right through rolled up car windows as motorists zip down country lanes in the evening, and if - foolishly - kept indoors as a pet, the conehead can set off alarms and rapidly drive the homeowner completely mad.

Slightly Musical Conehead

We had a great time making sense of the sounds of the night, and even finding some of the singers so that people could meet them firsthand. Many people commented that this experience opened up a whole new dimension of nature that they hadn't thought much about.

I'm sure we'll be wandering around in the dark at next year's Midwest Native Plant Conference, and I hope that you can join us.

Sounds of the night

Participants in last weekend's Ohio Certified Volunteer Naturalists workshop gather at twilight on Saturday night. We were out for whatever we could find, especially singing insects, or Orthopterans.

I LOVE nighttime excursions. A whole new world emerges after nightfall, and not nearly enough people get out to see the strange creatures of the blackness. Especially prominent from mid-July on through fall are the various insects that make sound: katydids, crickets, coneheads and their ilk. Insect songs can be learned just as those of birds, and knowing the nighttime singers adds an entirely new dimension to one's appreciation of natural history.

There are not an abundance of opportunities to get out with people who know these things, but attendees at the Midwest Native Plant Conference certainly will. The conference venue is the Marianist Environmental Education Center, 150 or so acres of plant diversity. We'll have night walks both Friday and Saturday night, and the numbers and diversity of singing insects should be spectacular. More conference info HERE.

We heard scads of Gladiator Meadow Katytdids, their songs resembling the shuffling of salt being roughly shaken in a shaker. It wasn't long before Nina of Nature Remains found one of the little singers doing its thing. These are showy little animals, somewhat resembling lime-green grasshoppers with lemon-yellow cerci and orangish eyes.

I use my I-pod Touch to play the songs of these bugs for people, so they can better learn to pick the targeted song from the cacophony of night sounds. When I played the Gladiator Meadow Katydid's song, a few of the insects clearly responded, just as birds will do.

There were plenty of Nebraska Coneheads about, the males singing their loud short buzzes. George Keeney eventually collared this fellow. Some coneheads, especially the Robust Conehead, are astonishingly loud and everyone who ventures into the countryside at night hears them. Few, probably, would suspect the crackling buzzes emanate from this very cool looking insect.

Nina's sharp eyes once again rewarded the group by finding this Broad-winged Bush Katydid snacking on the flowers of Sullivant's Milkweed, Asclepias sullivantii. These critters must have bulletproof constitutions, as all parts of milkweeds are infused with highly toxic cardiac glycosides.

Here's a male Broad-winged Bush Katydid ascending a flowering stem of Small-flowered Agrimony, Agrimonia parviflora. This species is also called the "Counting Katydid" and they are cool in the extreme. The slightly drawn out raspy notes are quite distinctive and easily recognized. And they truly count! A typical series begins with two notes; the next contains three; followed by four, etc. Sometimes they'll count all the way to eight!

It seems as if the males like to ascend tall plants to sing, perhaps the better to project their voice. If you know their song, it isn't too tough to find the singer.

Around these parts - central Ohio - the Common True Katydids have just started producing their loud rasps. Last Saturday night was the first time I had heard any this summer. Normally, the katydids are too high in the trees to see, but I happened to notice this male down low on the foliage of an American Elm, Ulmus americana. They are big, and look astonishingly leaf-like.

To learn more about singing insects, visit Wil Hershberger and Lang Elliot's outstanding Songs of Insects website. You can even play the songs of our Orthopterans there. Wil has a sensational talk filled with brilliant imagery and sounds, and he is keynote speaker at the aforementioned Midwest Native Plant Conference. And I'm sure he'll come along for our Friday evening foray into the dark.