Insect Fiddlers

     Late summer and fall are the best times to experience insects in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, including five common kinds of crickets.  Those five fiddling species include spring field crickets, fall field crickets, spotted camel crickets, mole crickets and snowy tree crickets.
     Males of each cricket species create chirps or trills, according to its kind, that are symbolic of autumn, and bring the genders of each species together for mating.  The courtship sounds those crickets make are caused by the males' rubbing rough parts of their wings and/or legs together, again depending on the species.  That stridulation causes friction, which creates the sound we hear from the crickets.  And that fiddling identifies each kind of cricket.  But the male crickets' seemingly unending, rhythmic plucking or trilling makes them vulnerable to predators, including skunks, toads, shrews, garter snakes and a variety of birds, including wild turkeys.
     Crickets are related to grasshoppers and katydids, and have body shapes like those relatives, including the large pair of back legs used for jumping.  But unlike grasshoppers and katydids, crickets are almost always under cover, hiding from those critters that would eat them.  A person must poke through grass and turn over rocks and logs to find most types of crickets.
     Crickets also blend into their surroundings, making them invisible until they move.  Those on soil and under logs are dark or spotted brown.  Those among foliage are green, which enables them to disappear among the leaves when those insects are still.
     Spring field crickets and fall field crickets resemble each other.  But spring crickets winter as nymphs, emerging in spring as adults and chirp by late May through much of summer when they lay eggs in the ground.  And fall crickets winter as eggs, hatch from those eggs in spring, mature during summer and stridulate and lay eggs by late July, into autumn.  Having different strategies for survival in families of life is good because if one fails the other may be successful, keeping that family of life going into the future.
     These two kinds of field crickets are abundant at the bases of grasses in meadows and rural roadsides where they create endless, musical chirping.  And occasionally they can be spotted leaping across country roads, when they are particularly vulnerable to predators.
     Spotted camel crickets are called that because they have humped top-sides.  This species is light-brown, spotted with beige.  They hide by day under logs, rocks and dead-leaf blankets on woodland floors, and leave their shelters at night to look for vegetable food.  But they make no sounds, perhaps because they huddle together under objects during each day where they have constant, quick access to each other without stridulating, which could give away their presence to predators.
     Mole crickets are unusual.  Built much like moles, they live in burrows they dig in the soft, damp soil of meadows.  They are brown, have strong, thick, shovel-like front legs and small, non-leaping back ones.  They can't jump in a burrow anyway.  This kind of cricket even has short, fine "hair".  But they are cold-blooded, as all insects are, and only an inch and a quarter long.  Males emit a succession of growling chirps that sound much like the hoarse croaking of frogs.  And because they live in dens in the ground, I hear far more of them than I ever see.
     Snowy tree crickets are three-quarters of an inch long, pale-green and have long, transparent wings.  They live camouflaged on green shrubbery in deciduous woods, and lawns with older trees and bushes.  Also called temperature crickets, males' fiddling seemingly is unending series of chirps that increase in pace as temperatures rise and decrease as temperatures fall.  That occurs because of the insects' being cold-blooded.
     Though they hide and are seldom seen, these common kinds of crickets are heard often during summer and autumn.  They are a pleasant part of fauna here in Lancaster County.