It was a strange – and increasingly unsettling – transition from spring into summer this year, and August’s approach toward early autumn already feels rushed.
May was unlike any I can remember. There was no rain for three weeks, and as a native Clevelander I can testify this simply does not happen here. As the lush, new growth of May gradually became increasingly stressed, what were the implications for the insects? And the birds? I dragged out the hoses and sprinkler for our miniature woodland understory backyard as I might do in August.
June couldn’t pretend that May never happened. Some of the trees impacted by those very dry weeks in May lost leaves and were more susceptible to storm damage. How did this affect the insects?
By late June and into July, the wildfire smoke from Canada arrived. There were no blue skies – only monochromatic gray without the distinction of cloud shapes. Although our little bungalow is not air conditioned, we kept all our windows closed.
The arrival of the smoke plumes occurred at exactly the time I typically begin to watch and listen for the earliest singing insects. This year, it became the first time I have ever walked the beautiful meadows at night while wearing a KN95 mask. Sometimes I’d briefly slip the mask down below my nose to hide my face in a large Queen Anne’s lace flower or breathe in all the green around me, but the smoke declared I could not pretend this was safe.
How would these environmental factors impact the insects?
It was time for the first Gladiator Meadow Katydids to begin singing from thick-stemmed grasses, but their ascent to their stages was delayed by at least a week.
The appearance onstage of the Gladiators’ musical partners – the Broad-winged Bush Katydids - was also late. Would this pattern continue for each new arrival?
I always worry when singing insects are late. I realize they’ll likely present their adult selves eventually, but what if conditions affect their populations to the extent their stage doors remain locked?
The omnipresent Carolina Ground Cricket choruses in the front and back yards were also behind schedule, and the silence was exceptionally worrisome. Were they flooded out and washed away in one of the torrential downpours? These little crickets are the continuo of the backyard ensemble, and their absence was far more noticeable than their expected presence.
I was quite relieved when the Carolina Ground Crickets tentatively began to sing, then gradually became a reassuring chorus. They remained the only Orthopteran voices I heard well into the first week of August.
In a typical late spring/early summer, I confess I laugh to myself when people on Facebook and elsewhere annually declare an incipient disaster when they do not hear crickets. They sound the alarm: Where are the crickets??!! It’s May. Or it’s early June. There shouldn’t BE any mature crickets yet! Unless they are Spring Field Crickets or Spring Trigs, (notice they have the word “spring” in their names) there are no crickets that are anywhere close to maturing.
But I know my singing insects, and I’m quite aware of their approximate start dates. I’ve been recording this information for years.
For example, I expect Sword-bearing Coneheads to join the Gladiators and Broad-winged Bush Katydids any time from July 21, but all I found were a few conehead nymphs.
Sword-bearing Conehead nymphs, Frohring Meadows, Geauga Park District July 2023
As the end of July approached, the overdue debut of the first Sword-bearing Conehead chorus finally arrived. I rejoiced! The Sword-bearing Coneheads were singing in the meadows and parading up and down their plant stems as one triumphant singer after another proclaimed his perfection.
Sword-bearing Coneheads, North Chagrin Reservation, Cleveland Metroparks 8-1-23
But that alone was not enough to dispel my ongoing unease. The big nights of newly maturing singing insects should have begun a week earlier but still hadn’t occurred.
Was it the storms with torrential rains? Did the high winds that sent us down into the basement for shelter rip the katydid and tree cricket nymphs from their leafy tree and shrub branches?
There were no Pine Tree Crickets singing in the Norway spruce or the white pine, even though they’re typically the first tree cricket species I hear.
The Common True Katydids should have been calling emphatically from the oak trees with Snowy Tree Crickets singing below them in the large flowering raspberry leaves and the backyard understory trees and shrubs.
I would have expected the Two-spotted Tree Crickets to be screaming their strident songs from the vines in the back of the yard and across the street, outperforming the neighbors’ noisy window air conditioner as they do every year.
Like most singing insects, tree crickets are easier to hear than to visually find! Narrow-winged Tree Crickets are no exception, but I occasionally can watch them in the backyard. I've been known to get up on a step ladder to get a better view.
This is how our backyard should sound once all the singers mature!
I only heard the Carolina Ground Crickets and the wind.
Even tonight – August 7th – there are just two or three Snowies, a Two-spotted, and one Narrow-winged Tree Cricket. For the first time in 28 years, there are still no loud, raspy, insistent Common True Katydid proclamations high up in the oaks.
I hope my beloved singing insects are all just late, because one of these years, my worries may not be an over-reaction.
Common True Katydid in our Cleveland Heights backyard, 2017
