Lancaster County Grasshoppers

     Late summer into autumn is the time of the year to see a variety of common, interesting grasshoppers in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, as elsewhere.  They live in meadows and fields, but are most evident among tall grasses and weeds along rural roadsides.  Roadside shoulders may get mowed occasionally, but not plowed, allowing grasshoppers, and other creatures, a place free of agricultural activities, a place where they can live and reproduce in peace in cultivated farmland. 
     I see many grasshoppers of up to seven attractive kinds leap away from me as I walk along the edges of overgrown, grassy country roads in this area's croplands.  They have good enough vision and jumping legs to give them a chance of staying out of harm's way.  The seven include differential, spur-throated, red-legged, meadow, banded-winged, cone-headed and gladiator katydids.  These grasshoppers are another representative of late summer and fall because they are now big enough to easily see as they jump away from potential danger.  
     Differential grasshoppers are up to an inch and a half long, mostly green-gray all over and have a black herring-bone pattern on each upper back leg.  In fall, some of these large grasshoppers sit on the blacktop of country roads where they are visible, but where a few of them get squashed by passing vehicles.       
     Spur-throated grasshoppers are one and a quarter inches long and resemble differentials, except spur-throats are yellowish-green.  This species also has herring-bone patterns on the upper parts of their hind legs.  
     Red-legged grasshoppers are about one inch long and have dull-red on the thin, lower parts of their back legs.  This species often seems to be the most common one here in Lancaster County; the most visible at any rate. 
     Meadow grasshoppers are about an inch long and green for the most part, which blends them into the green grass they ingest.  This type of grasshopper is usually heard before it is seen.  Males use their wings to alternately produce a pleasant, accelerating trill, followed by several clicks, then more trills and clicks. 
     Banded-winged grasshoppers are roughly an inch and a half long and mostly light-brown, which camouflages them on soil sparsely covered with vegetation.  Males of this species are dramatically visible when they flutter noisily on their black, yellow-edged wings above the plant cover for a few seconds.  They expose themselves in that way to advertise their presence to attract females of their kind to them for mating.  That publicity is dangerous when predators, including American kestrels and wild turkeys, are nearby.
     I call cone-headed grasshoppers "shakers" because their pulsing, raspy stridulations sound like they are being shaken from the males producing them.  Coneheads are green all over, which camouflages them in the green grass they consume.  And these one and a quarter inch grasshoppers have pointed, cone-shaped heads which gives them their common name.
     Another kind of grassland grasshopper, called gladiator katydids, is one and a quarter inches long and mostly green, which camouflages them in the grass they ingest.  This species, too, produces alternate trills and clicks.       
     Late in spring, these various kinds of grasshoppers hatch from eggs laid in the ground by their mothers the autumn before.  When hatched, they look like tiny replicas of their parents.  They grow through summer and mature early in autumn.  Mated females of the year use their ovipositors that extend from the ends of their abdomens to lay another generation of eggs in the ground in fall.  All grasshoppers in this area later die during heavy frosts late in October.  But the eggs overwinter in the soil and produce the next generation of grasshoppers in the warmth of the next spring.
     All these grasshopper species blend into the grassy habitats they eat.  Being camouflaged hides them from birds and other kinds of daytime predators.  But many grasshoppers are eaten by a variety of predators anyway, particularly at night, including striped skunks, red foxes, short-tailed shrews, two kinds of toads, a few kinds of harmless snakes and a variety of other species.  Female grasshoppers, however, make up for losses by laying scores to hundreds of eggs, depending on the species.
     Grass-eating grasshopper species help make fields, meadows and country roadsides in Lancaster County farmland in summer and fall more interesting.  And they feed numerous and equally intriguing wildlife.  Get out and walk along quiet country roads to see some of these grasshoppers, and other kinds of wildlife as well.