Katydids | The Music of Nature

Stormy Night of the Katydids

by Wil Hershberger · August 20, 2012 · 12 Comments

As night was falling, a rumbling thunderstorm moved in from the west. Common True Katydids were calling raucously from the oak woods in back of my house with temperatures in the low 80s. The interplay of the storm and the katydids was a delight to my ears. Featured here is a portion of that recording. Listening with headphones will put you right in the midst of the action.

Common True Katydids are among the loudest of our night-time singing insects. They are flightless, having to walk from tree-to-tree through the vegetation or on the ground. Severe storms can dislodge a number of these large katydids and send them to the forest floor. Looking for them after a very windy storm may yield a number of these handsome creatures walking along the ground in search of a tree to climb.

The harsh, rattled call of the males, ch-ch-ch, is familiar to most anyone who lives within their range. Groups of males in one tree will often alternate singing with another group of males singing in a neighboring tree, thus creating a pulsating cadence.

I hope that you enjoy this interesting recording of these night-time chorusers.

Common True Katydids singing during an approaching thunderstorm. Recorded by Wil Hershberger, July 31, 2012 in West Virginia.

The Scuds are Singing!

by Lang Elliott · July 15, 2012 · 10 Comments

It’s mid-July and the scuds are singing, and I don’t mean scud missiles. I mean katydids of the genus Scudderia, named after Samuel Hubbard Scudder (1837-1911), an early American entomologist. In nearby Connecticut Hill Wildlife Management Area, I’m now hearing the songs of two species: the Broad-winged Bush Katydid (Scudderia pistillata) and the Northern Bush Katydid (Scudderia septentrionalis). It is the latter that excites me most right now because the window of time in which it sings is narrow and it’s always a pleasure to home-in on them when they are at their peak.

In my neck of the woods, the Northern Bush Katydid sings from thick shrubs at the edges of clearings. Males start singing at dusk and their rate of singing is highest shortly after dark. When there’s a lot of courtship and mating going on (which there is now at Conn Hill), you will be alerted to their presence by the excited, high-pitched clicks of the male, which are so high-pitched that many people are not able to hear them except up close (most of their energy is around 12,000 Hz!). As the clicks get more excited, the male will break into a series of buzzes lasting several seconds; they too may be difficult for some to hear.

Below is a closeup recording of a single male clicking and buzzing, recorded at very close range with a parabolic reflector microphone. Note how his minute-long performance gradually builds to a crescendo, ending with a series of loud clicks followed by silence (I believe the male flew to a different perch upon completion of his song series):

Northern Bush Katydid. 11pm, Conn Hill WMA near Ithaca, NY. July 14, 2012. Lang Elliott

Interestingly, calling occurs in waves and appears to be contagious. After a period of quiet lasting a few minutes or longer, one male will begin clicking and others in its vicinity will join in. Soon you’ll hear buzzes erupting and the whole affair builds in intensity … then suddenly all the katydids fall silent. This kind of contagious group singing behavior is not uncommon in the singing insect world.

April Shuffler – A Coneheaded Surprise

by Lang Elliott · April 22, 2010 · 3 Comments

The spring insect chorus here at Land Between the Lakes is richer than I expected.

Shortly after arriving here on April 19, I became aware of the chirping of Spring Field Crickets and I quickly posted a celebration of their song: The April Chirper. And I figured “that was that,” as far as singing insects were concerned.

But last night when I returned to my camp at dusk and prepared to retire after a long and busy day, I became aware of a very high-pitched “shuffling trill,” not pretty like that of a trilling cricket, but non-musical like the shuffles and scrapes of various katydids.

With the help of a directional microphone, I homed-in on the insect singer, recorded him, and then found him perched on the stem of a sapling growing at the edge of the forest. He was a brown-colored conehead katydid, about an inch-and-a-half long.

I christen him The April Shuffler and here is his high-pitched song:

The shuffling trill of a Hook-faced Conehead. Recorded at dusk by Lang Elliott at Land Between the Lakes, Kentucky, April 21, 2010.

What species of conehead could the April Shuffler be? In our book The Songs of Insects, Wil Hershberger and I feature the songs of five common species of coneheads, but all overwinter as eggs and don’t start singing until mid to late summer. Consulting Tom Walker’s fabulous web site, Singing Insects of North America, I found that there are twenty-three species of coneheads in North America. But which one could possibly be singing in April here at my camp spot in western Kentucky?

Sifting through Tom’s species descriptions and range maps, I was able to identify my shuffler as a Hook-faced Conehead, Pyrgocorypha uncinata, even though he is slightly north of the species’ supposed range (see map below). The name “hook-faced” refers to the down-curved hook at the end of his cone. Adults of this species mature in late summer and fall but do not become reproductively active until April or May of the following year. Either brown or green in color, the males sing from trees and wooded undergrowth.

Mystery solved! But yet another mystery beckons. Earlier the same evening I discovered yet another springtime insect singer along the side of a road—he was producing a nearly continuous musical trill. I’ll call him The April Triller (ha, ha). Must be some kind of cricket (because lots of crickets trill like this), but one that overwinters as a nymph or an adult. But which one is it? I don’t have time to check right now, so why don’t you check for me by visiting Tom Walker’s Web Site and searching for the singer?

Here is the April Triller’s song. The temperature was around 55 F. He is trilling at about 4kHz. I challenge you to tell me what species the singer is!

What cricket would be producing continuous trills from along roadsides in late April in Kentucky? You tell me! Recorded shortly at dusk by Lang Elliott at Land Between the Lakes, Kentucky, April 21, 2010.

Long-spurred Stridulations

by Wil Hershberger · January 29, 2010 · 1 Comment

One of my favorite things to do, in late summer and fall, is listening to the songs of insects. Getting close enough to watch a katydid actually singing can be quite exciting. This video vignette of a Long-spurred Meadow Katydid gets right in there, up close. Being able to watch him sing is a great way to learn about stridulation.

In crickets and katydids, stridulation is the rubbing of one wing against the other. Males are the only ones that sing, so it’s the males that we seek out to observe. The male in this video is “left-handed,” his left wing lies over his right one. Most crickets and katydids are left-handed. In the image to the left, we are looking at the area of the wings where the sounds are produced, the stridulatory field. The underside of the bar that runs across the stridulatory field has a row of tiny teeth and is called the file. An edge on the top of the lower wing, the scraper, runs across this file vibrating the wings. These vibrations cause the clear areas in both wings (the mirrors) to resonate, amplifying and producing the sounds that we hear. While watching the video, carefully look for these features as he sings. I was extremely fortunate to find this singing Long-spurred Meadow Katydid in a friend’s beautiful garden. He was perched beside a gurgling water fall in a patch of gorgeous purple Russian Sage (Perovskia artriplicifolia).

Katydids produce sounds that span many frequencies, from 5,000 Hz to more than 20,000 Hz. We perceive broad spectrum sounds as noise in contrast to the pleasing sounds of a pure tone. The sonogram player below shows this broad spectrum character of our katydids’ song. (To learn more about frequencies and human hearing see this page.)

Long-spurred Meadow Katydid singing in isolation. Recorded in Ohio, August 2002 by Wil Hershberger.

Because the Long-spurred Meadow Katydid produces broad spectrum sounds where most of the energy lies above 10,000 Hz, their songs are rather difficult for some people to hear. The pitch lowered song example below is much more audible to our ears. The recording was lowered two octaves in pitch, but nothing was done to the tempo of the song.

Pitch lowered version (2 octaves). Long-spurred Meadow Katydid singing in isolation. Recorded in Ohio, August 2002 by Wil Hershberger.

Long-spurred Meadow Katydids occur across the mid-western US, from eastern Ohio to western Nebraska and from southern Minnesota to the Gulf coast. Cedar thickets, wooded areas and the margins of woods and fields are their preferred habitats. They seem to prefer cedars and junipers for their homes. From these lofty perches they sing day and night from July until the frosts of fall silence them for the season. Listening to a chorus of many singing males fiddling away on a warm summer afternoon is a wonderfully relaxing and pleasing experience.