Cones and Seeds: Listening in Context

I’m going to write a few posts this summer about crickets and katydids in context. I’ve written about individual species and certainly about range expansion, and I think it’s also very helpful to observe these insects as part of a habitat. What do they eat? Which other Orthopterans are in the habitat, and how are they similar? Do those other species use the same plants? Is there any similarity between their songs?

Let’s start with many people’s favorite katydid: the Sword-bearing Conehead.

First, you hear them.

 

Lisa Rainsong · Sword - Bearing Conehead

 

Then, you attempt to find one. This could take a while

If and when you’re successful, I invite you to photograph him, but don’t move along just yet. You may know his song and his general appearance, but there’s so much more to observe!

First, what does he do while he’s singing? You might assume he’ll just stay in one position with his cone upright, but…

 

 Sword-bearing Conehead (Neoconocephalus ensiger)

He can – and will – sing upside down and will parade up and down a stem without missing a single pulse of his ongoing song. I find this rather impressive.

Females as well as males will dine upside-down.

 

 

Try not to disturb them, though, because they’ll turn upside down and drop cone first into the grasses, never to be seen by you again.

And definitely admire the female's ovipositor. She’s the one that bears the sword!

 

Although the males sing almost tirelessly, both males and females spend a lot of time enthusiastically eating…seeds, seeds, and more seeds! 

 

  

It’s fortunate that they have six legs, because they have to hold on to their stems while extricating those seeds. It’s fairly straightforward when they climb up a substantial grass stem with a seed head at the top, and upside down looks so effortless for them.

 

With patience and good fortune, you may be able to maneuver to the opposite side of the stem and actually watch them eat.

And that mouth!

 

Coneheads in Context

While every conehead is quite splendid in itself, it also is part of a broader context. What about their habitat? Other Orthopteran neighbors? Who else is singing, and how can we separate the songs?

While studying Sword-bearing Coneheads (or any other singing insect), notice the habitat and what other singing insects might share it. In this case, the habitat is usually an open field or meadow with grasses and quite possibly a mix of forbs such as goldenrod and asters as well. Remember, the male will need a fairly substantial stem for his singing perch.

When looking for a Sword-bearing Conehead, I’ll often find meadow katydid nymphs and adults. Slender Meadow Katydids mature in later July, as do the Sword-bearers. Tiny Short-winged Meadow Katydid nymphs will also be searching for seeds. 

 

 

Why not see what you can learn about these neighbors? If they live in the same habitat, do they share similarities with the Sword-bearing Coneheads? 

Slender Meadow Katydids may not have a prominent cone, but they, too can also perch, eat, and sing upside down. Their slender, green bodies and long, brown wings create an impressive blend with the grasses in which they live. They, too, love seeds! 

Lisa Rainsong · Slender Meadow Katydid

                                    

Slender Meadow Katydid female (Conocephalus fasciatus)

 

In some areas, the habitat may be shared with Straight-lanced Meadow Katydids. Look at the female’s ovipositor – she’s carrying a substantial sword herself. And look at the little bump on this species’ head: it’s not quite a cone, but it looks like it could grow into one. These katydids live in grassy fields and are also seed-eaters.  

Lisa Rainsong · Straight - lanced Meadow Katydid

 

                                

Straight-lanced Meadow Katydid (Conocephalus strictus)

Male, above and female, below

 

Short-winged Meadow Katydids are also common in meadows, though they live in edge habitats as well. They're just as fond of seeds as the Slender and Straight-lanced Meadow Katydids and could certainly be found in the same vicinity as the Sword-bearing Coneheads. What I find especially charming about them is how boldly the nymphs climb all the way to the tops of big bluestem after dark so that they can reach the abundance of seeds far above the ground.

Lisa Rainsong · Short-winged Meadow Katydid

 

  Short-winged Meadow Katydid female (Conocephalus brevipennis)

 

There are two Orchelimum meadow katydids you may find as well: Gladiator Meadow Katydids in the early summer and Common Meadow Katydids a little later. They are a little larger and heftier than those in the Conocephalus genus, but they appear and sound more similar than different.

Gladiator Meadow Katydids live in a somewhat wider range of habitats, as they can be found both in grassy meadows and in wetland edges. They are just as enamored with seeds as the other katydids we've visited. 

Lisa Rainsong · Gladiator Meadow Katydid Bath Nature Preserve

 

 

 Gladiator Meadow Katydid (Orchelimum gladiator)

  

Common Meadow Katydids are a possibility as well, though they are not as widespread in NE Ohio as our Gladiators. Common Meadow Katydids can be found in fields and meadows, but not typically near wetlands.

Lisa Rainsong · Common Meadow Katydid Bigelow Cemetery

 

Common Meadow Katydid (Orchelimum vulgare)

 

It's a nice collection of seed enthusiasts, and any of them may be found singing and feasting with the Sword-bearing Coneheads.

And what is it about timothy, anyway? It’s a favorite among coneheads and meadow katydids, but they’re not the only ones. I see meadow and edge habitat tree crickets - including nymphs – on timothy. Beetles. Bugs. I've even seen slugs up on timothy seed heads! If we're looking at and listening to the overall Sword-bearer habitat, why not see who else is sharing the dining room?

 Narrow-winged Tree Cricket (Oecanthus niveus)

Let's focus next on the various meadow katydid songs and the Sword-bearing Conehead’s song. Listen: are there similarities? I imagine you'll find the meadow katydids to be challenging to tell apart. Their songs are typically long repetitions of tics and/or whirrs that are fairly high in frequency (as in pitch, not occurrence). Let's do a comparison and you can see (or hear) what you think.

The meadow katydids are quite similar and the Sword-bearing Coneheads seem to blend in nicely with their continuous, high-frequency songs. Why are such similar songs heard in the same habitat? What makes them suitable for meadows and fields? 

Lisa Rainsong · Cones and Seeds medley

    

The order of the singers is: Sword-bearing Conehead, Slender Meadow Katydid, 

Straight-lanced Meadow Katydid, Short-winged Meadow Katydid, Gladiator Meadow Katydid, Common Meadow Katydid, and a return to the Sword-bearing Conehead.

 

I'll compare these to some of the woodland and edge habitat katydids in the next post I write.

I’ll leave you with one more interesting fact about the Sword-bearing Coneheads. Although they are generally green in my area (NE Ohio), I have found a couple of brown forms as well. Some coneheads, such as the Round-tipped, seem to occur in equal numbers of green and brown forms, but a brown Sword-bearer is a rare treat in NE Ohio. The only two I have found in my area were at Bath Nature Preserve in Summit County. The first photo is a brown female with a rosy face. You'll see how the brown male in the second photo blends beautifully while hiding in the dried grasses.

Assisting with the second Ohio Breeding Bird Atlas taught me a great deal about watching and listening for behavior, relationships, and overall context. I approach singing insects in a similar way, and there are fascinating things to learn from any of them.

And what better place to start than coneheads and their seeds?

 

 

 

Straight-lanced Surprises

My last post recounted my story of recording a Fork-tailed Bush Katydid, which in 2017 was still an unaccomplished goal I'd set for myself years earlier. But the Fork-tailed wasn’t the only singing insect I still needed to record. 

I also needed my own recording of a Straight-lanced Meadow Katydid (Conocephalus strictus). This is a meadow katydid I see in a couple of locations every year, although they’re not especially common and only seem to show up in scattered little groups. I’m more likely to find them in drier habitat than in the dense goldenrod/blackberry/dogwood meadows and fields so typical of my area. 

Except for their diminutive wings, they’re a little more substantial than other members of the Conocephalus genus. 

The males’ cerci are noticeably longer and straighter than those of other meadow katydids... 

...and the females’ long, blade-like ovipositors set them apart from most of the other members of their genus. 
 

I don’t know which characteristic gave the species its "Straight-lanced" name, but it seems appropriate either way. 

Their wings, however, are even shorter than those of the soft-singing Short-winged Meadow Katydids (Conocephalus brevipennis), and I think that’s been part of my challenge in recording them: I can’t really tell if the males are singing. 

With other meadow katydids whose songs are difficult to hear, I can watch their wings move and try to get my microphone so close that it almost touches the singing katydid. But the Straight-lanced? I seemed perpetually unable to correct this gap in my field recording collection. 

I brought a male home a few years ago but never saw or heard him sing. I was convinced he was just too miserable to perform, so I eventually took him back to his birthplace. The following year, I borrowed both a male and a female, thinking that the female would inspire the male to make a statement about his impressive genetic material. I didn’t hear a thing from him. If he did sing, I simply couldn’t tell. 

  
My “studio recording” success with the Fork-tailed Bush Katydid encouraged me to try the same procedure with a male Straight-lanced Meadow Katydid. When I eventually found one to bring back here for an overnight recording session, it was exactly the right technique for this project! He not only sang – he sang nonstop for extended periods of time. From the changes in volume level during the recording, he apparently walked all around the terrarium, singing as he traveled. 

When I looked at the overnight recordings, I also learned there was more to these singing sessions than I realized. He sang for up to a half an hour without even pausing, but it wasn’t just a single repetitious song. There were variations within it that did not seem to follow any kind of pattern that I could determine. Here are the two kinds of trills in the song – one fast and concentrated, and the other slower with more separation between wing strokes. 

(Did you have to turn up your speakers a little when you clicked on the arrow - or maybe a lot? You would not be the only reader/listener who found this to be necessary. We'll talk more about those vanishing high frequencies in a future post.)

This Straight-lanced singer would apparently alternate between them seemingly at random, although there certainly must have been some kind of organization that simply wasn’t obvious to me. After all, I didn’t know his musical score or how he was responding to his environment. 

The fast trill would go directly into the slower one and then back. In addition, he'd sometimes stop for less than a second, then immediately produce an energetic burst of song that continued right into one of the two kinds of trills. It's visible on the sonograms. 

 

Both my recording success and unexpected song observations were quite rewarding, and I assumed this would be my Straight-lanced Meadow Katydid story for the season.

An unexpected chapter began a month later.

Lake County Metroparks biologist John Pogacnik, well-known and highly respected for his field observations, shared a intriguing discovery with me: brown Straight-lanced Meadow Katydids at a park property in Lake County that’s not open to the public. He offered to show them to me, and I was delighted to meet them.

I saw green individuals first, then some that were a darker olive green, 

lighter brown ones, 

and then very dark brown ones all within one small area! Look at him! Isn't he gorgeous?

The dark katydids resembled their green counterparts, but the color was so different that I thought it would be good to document their songs. Would they be the same as those of the green male I recorded the month before? John invited me to bring a few home to photograph and record, since I would return them to their home as soon as I was able to obtain this documentation. 

First, I needed to get some closeup photos of the cerci (the male's posterior projections that can be used to determine the species). Katydids are not necessarily gracious and cooperative about letting humans photograph their anatomy, but my experience with meadow katydids has been that both males and females will ascend to the terrarium’s screen lid and walk upside down along it. 

I was right about the screen lid, but the male whose cerci I tried to photograph simply wouldn’t stand still and pose. I was persistent and eventually obtained a clear enough photo to show that the cerci were indeed the same as those of green males. 

And a recording? I used the same home studio recording process that worked with the green male and with the Fork-tailed Bush Katydid. Yes, both of the visiting males sang what was clearly a Straight-lanced song. There was a fast “whirr” followed by the slower, more decisive pattern.  In one lengthy proclamation, I counted the pulses at 24 per second for the fast whirr and only 8-9 per second for the slower passage. In others, the whirr was about twice the speed of the slower song.

The split-second pauses were present, and so were the bursts of more intense song illustrated by the dark brown individual's song above. The songs of the the brown males were consistent with those of the green male I'd recorded a month earlier.

Now that John and I both had photo documentation and I had recordings, it was time for these little beauties to return home. However, I had limited confidence in my ability to get them into traveling containers, as they are very accomplished jumpers. 

Instead, I took the terrariums themselves right to the exact spot where we'd caught these katydids, and then I removed the lids. The brown katydids leaped out and disappeared into the plants they knew so well.

How fortunate I am to have had the opportunity to see, photograph, and record them!