Snowy Tree Cricket singing in the backyard.
(Please note: some recent changes in SoundCloud and Blogspot have made it difficult to add sound files to my blog posts. I've added a recording for each of my featured crickets at the end of this blog post in case you have any difficulty with the ones that are interspersed within the story. Highlight the text that's in blue (which will be a recording), enter it in a browser, and click on it.
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It’s been another weird summer here in NE Ohio. After an extensive period of hot, dry weather, fall seemed to come crashing in quite a bit early – but only briefly. Very dry weather continued across Ohio, which was definitely not beneficial for our singing insects and the plants in which they live.
Although the temperature was in the 70s and even low 80s (and generally quite dry), late October brought an autumnal change that would greatly affect any remaining singing insects within a few days.
Let’s check in with how the crickets and katydids (and their human admirer) are doing up here now.
As some of you already know, I had a left hip replacement on September 18th. It will ultimately be very beneficial, though it initially has greatly limited my field work. Most of my field observations were restricted to our backyard.
It's actually not quite as limited of a location as one might assume. Because of our enhancement to the backyard habitat over the years, we have a good number of singing insects right here at home. While there’s not a large number of species, there is reasonable variety for an old, inner-ring suburban backyard.
Handsome Trigs sang next to the porch in the later afternoon and early evening.
There was still some singing not far from the house into late October, though chilly nights began closing down the evening concerts by then.
Why is that, by the way? Temperature greatly affects singing. The males’ wings are their instruments. One wing has a file and the other has a scraper. The males’ songs are created by rubbing the scraper across the file.
On very warm summer nights, the songs are faster and higher in pitch. When nights are cooler, the crickets don’t move their wings as rapidly and the songs become slower and also lower in pitch. They can even sound as though they must belong to a different species altogether because of the change in pitch and tempo, which can be quite confusing when people are trying to learn the most common songs.
And when the evenings get chilly, those songs will become noticeably slower and lower in pitch. It’s not necessarily an unpleasant sound, though. In fact, it’s sometimes even possible to hear their actual wing strokes occurring as well as the pitch that’s being generated. This seems especially true for the Jumping Bush Crickets.
The frenetic summer “concerts” are exciting, but the late summer/early autumn concerts are peaceful and quite beautiful.
I’m going to focus on three cricket species that are the primary singers in our backyard: the Snowy Tree Cricket, Jumping Bush Cricket, and Handsome Trig. These were the crickets I could most easily hear when I still wasn't able to venture beyond the back porch.
This is not a trio that I’d expect to hear in most of our parks, though all three are native species. I’ll leave out the even-present Carolina Ground Crickets for now and also the Common True Katydids high up in the trees. (Our immediately neighborhood is fortunate to have them in the numerous oaks here.)
The three species who were closest to my seat on the back porch steps were the Snowy Tree Cricket, Jumping Bush Cricket, and Handsome Trig.
Snowy Tree Cricket (Oecanthus fultoni)
(range map from Singing Insects of North America at orthsoc.org/sina)
https://soundcloud.com/user-475605585/snowy-tree-montford-68-deg
Why are they much more common in cities and suburbs? I don’t know, and I’d like to learn why. I’ve only heard Snowy Tree Crickets in a few places outside of Cleveland.
You probably know the song, as it’s the stereotypical cricket song used in movies to illustrate summer nights.
Snowy Tree Cricket singing
This species is sometimes called the “temperature cricket” because counting the number of chirps heard withing a given time period can indicate the approximate air temperature. The formula (as presented by AI) is known as Dolbear's Law and can be used to estimate temperature in degrees Fahrenheit by counting the number of cricket chirps in 15 seconds and adding 40. A simplified version for Celsius is to count chirps in 25 seconds, divide by three, and add four.
Even if we’re not looking for the precise temperature, the change in Snowy Tree Cricket song tempo and number of chirps per second will clearly demonstrate the difference between a warm individual on a summer night and a chilly cricket doing his best to continue singing at the beginning of October.
Mating pair of Snowy Tree Crickets
Although the range map indicates a wide distribution, I do not typically hear these crickets in the parks and preserves in my region. I believe I’ve only heard Snowwy Tree Crickets in more rural areas two or three times. One of those locations is Lake Erie Bluffs in eastern Lake County right above the lakeshore. The Geauga Park District's Chickagami Park in the southeast corner of Geauga County is another.
Yet I find Snowy Tree Crickets singing in the old, inner-ring suburbs of Cleveland. How did they get there, and when did they arrive? Why are these neighborhoods acceptable
Jumping Bush Cricket (Orocharis saltator)
(range map from Singing Insects of North America at orthsoc.org/
https://soundcloud.com/user-475605585/jumping-bush-crickets-warm
You'll be able to tell the Snowy Tree Cricket and the Jumping Bush Cricket apart fairly easily, as both their "voices" and their rhythmic patterns are quite different from each other. They are very different visually as well.
Handsome Trig (Phyllopalpus pulchellus) orthsoc.org/sina
https://soundcloud.com/user-475605585/handsome-trig-in-singing-cage
The treble member of the ensemble is the Handsome Trig. He is much smaller than the other two crickets and his colors are quite striking! Although the range map suggests they are not common, these tiny crickets moved northward until they reached Lake Erie.From there, they moved east along the lakeshore. and I tracked their progress as they did so. They are now an expected sound in the summer evening lakeshore chorus.
Handsome Trigs have recently become plentiful in our back yard, where they are a welcome addition. Their songs don’t overlap very much with the other two cricket species because they sing primarily in the afternoon and into the early evening.
This is my featured trio. Snowy Tree Crickets were probably already here, and the Jumping Bush Crickets and Handsome Trigs subsequently joined them to form a gorgeous ensemble – just not one you’re likely to hear in more rural areas. Who would have thought we’d have an urban cricket trio?
We do have Common True Katydids up in the oaks and maples, and there are a few Greater Angle-wings as well (another species that can be found in Cleveland’s old, inner-ring suburbs.) Our back yard Norway spruce and white pine typically host a singing Pine Tree Cricket each year, and the back of our yard always has loud, strident Two-spotted Tree Crickets.
Greater Angle-wing katydid on my finger after I untangled him from a spider web on the back porch.
https://soundcloud.com/user-475605585/greater-anglewing-alone-four
One or two singing Four-spotted Tree Crickets complete the backyard ensemble, and Carolina Ground Crickets can be heard anywhere in both the front and back yards. (There are no other ground crickets in our front or back yards – no Allard's or Striped Ground Crickets, though both are very common throughout NE Ohio.)
All three species of my featured ensemble were still singing during the unseasonably warm night on 10/18, and I listened from the back porch to what would likely be their final performance. Subsequent showers were most welcome after the long dry spell, and these insects can deal with rain. But rain and wind increased with temperatures dropping significantly. I don't yet know if any survived till the end of October, but I doubt that I will hear them again. Perhaps I'll add a brief postlude here if I do.They are leaving me with questions I can't yet answer. I know which singing insects live here and which do not, and I often know how long the newer residents have been in my area. What I’d very much like to know is how they arrived here, and why they became established in the residential areas and parks where I've found them (I have ideas, but no proof). And as you may have noted, they will only be in residential areas where no pesticides are being used.
In the meantime, I'll quietly thank them for helping me get through the initial weeks of my hip replacement recovery.
Finally standing at the edge of the driveway! This area was home to Snowy Tree Crickets and Jumping Bush Crickets that sang each night.
Recordings above can also be found here. Highlight the one you want to hear and open it in a browser. As of now, the links
https://soundcloud.com/user-475605585/snowy-tree-montford-68-deg
https://soundcloud.com/user-475605585/jumping-bush-crickets-warm
https://soundcloud.com/user-475605585/handsome-trig-in-singing-cage
https://soundcloud.com/user-475605585/jumping-bush-crickets-at-55
You can read much more about each of these crickets in my online field guide at
https://www.listeningtoinsects.com.
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