Ep 177. Nighttime Chorus of Garden Insects

In this episode, Mary Stone chats about the nighttime chorus of garden insects from her screened porch, highlighting the Agile Meadow Katydid, Fall Field Cricket, and Snowy Tree Cricket. 

Then shares a personal story about her niece and the healing power of nature, emphasizing the life-changing outcomes of learning to love and let go. Thanks for tuning in. 

Related Stories:

Nighttime Chorus of Garden Insects– Blog Post

Cicadas sing 'Back to School' – Blog Post 

Ep 176. Revisiting Cicadas and How Gardens Glow

Ep 129. Saving Snapping Turtles Lifts Spirits

Ep 30. Attracting Toads, Frog Watch

Helpful Links:

SongsofInsects.com Agile Meadow Katydid (Orchelimum agile)

        Spring and Fall Field Cricket (Gryllus pennsylvanicus)

        Snowy Tree Cricket (Oecanthus fultoni)

Biokids link to Common Meadow Katydid (Orchelimum vulgare)

        8888

I'd love to hear your garden and nature stories and your thoughts about topics for future podcast episodes. You can email me at AskMaryStone@gmail.com. 

You can Follow Garden Dilemmas on Facebook and Instagram #MaryElaineStone.

Episode web page —Garden Dilemmas Podcast Page

 Thank you for sharing the Garden of Life,

Mary Stone, Columnist & Garden Designer

                                        AskMaryStone.com

More about the Podcast and Column:

Welcome to Garden Dilemmas, Delights, and Discoveries.

It's not only about gardens; it's about nature's inspirations, about grasping the glories of the world around us, gathering what we learned from mother nature, and carrying these lessons into our garden of life. So, let's jump in in the spirit of learning from each other. We have lots to talk about.

Thanks for tuning in, Mary Stone
Garden Dilemmas? AskMaryStone.com
Direct Link to Podcast Page

Transcript

Ep 177 Nighttime Chorus of Garden Insects

In this episode, Mary Stone chats about the nighttime chorus of garden insects from her screened porch, highlighting the Agile Meadow Katydid, Fall Field Cricket, and Snowy Tree Cricket. 

Then shares a personal story about her niece and the healing power of nature, emphasizing the life-changing outcomes of learning to love and let go. Thanks for tuning in.

Keywords

crickets, insects, sounds, garden, chirp, night, songs, leaves, dilemmas, cicadas, eat, learn, nighttime, spring, grasshopper, katydids, porch, faster, worry, singers, mary stone, garden, nature, inspiration

Speakers

Mary Stone

0:00

Mary, Hello, fellow lovers of all things green. I'm Mary Stone and welcome to Garden Dilemmas, Delights, and Discoveries. It's not only about gardens. It's about nature's inspirations, about grasping the glories of the world around us, gathering what we learn from Mother Nature, and carrying these lessons into our garden of life. So let's jump in, the spirit of learning from each other, we have lots to talk about.

Mary Stone

0:23

Hello there. It's Mary Stone on the screen porch. I'm sitting with you at nighttime when I hear the chorus of insects, I hope you hear them in the background. Thanks to those who wrote back after our last episode, Revisiting Cicadas and How Gardens Glow with white flowers and white and green variegated foliage. As we discussed, the sounds of the cicadas in the trees ignite right after the chorus of night singers subsides, though often their songs overlap. It inspired digging in to learn about the nighttime chorus of insects I look forward to sharing, and it starts like this.

Mary Stone

1:03

Hello, fellow listeners and readers. While we don't often see the nighttime chorus of insects from mid to late summer into fall, we indeed hear them, and some continue to sing by day, joining the daytime ruckus of the cicadas. What a choir! Learning about the insects that make the night sounds and their impact and benefit to the garden is fascinating. I should preface this by saying there are many more nighttime singers than I am going to share, and I am hardly an expert. And one of the things I love about our visits is that I learn so much from the topics we discuss. So, I hope you will as well. 

Mary Stone

1:45

The Agile Meadow Katydid has a muted green body set against creamy wings and head. They love to live in open, weedy, grassy areas with lots of sun. Hmm, does that mean I have a lot of weeds? Let's call it a native meadow, thank you very much. It is true, I have this boggy area not far from the screen porch where a lot of these sounds originate, so it's a good home for these critters. 

Mary Stone

2:12

Agile meadow katydids are fast. Hence the common name and scientific name, which I'm not going to try to pronounce, but I will put the scientific names in the blog post, and of course, there's a link in the show notes. When threatened, they are savvy at hiding. Their camouflage colors blend with the leaves, and if further pursued, they rapidly hop several times before resting. They can't fly and use their wings only for calling. Agile Meadow Katydids live in the eastern United States, from New Jersey to East Texas, and they're moving westward. They sing both day and night, although their songs differ a bit. While they don't move much during the day, they sing most loudly for a mate, it's the nighttime when they are more on the move, looking for food, primarily leaves, sometimes fruit, dead insects and aphids, if they are slow moving.

Mary Stone

3:05

I adore Biokids' description of their song: the sound they make is distinct from that of all of the other types of katydids and grasshoppers. The song begins with a Zeeee, lasting three seconds, a pause for five seconds, and a series of Zips. I wonder if that's what I'm hearing in the trees because I kind of think that's the sound, zip, zip, zip.

Mary Stone

3:30

They sing louder and faster as the temperatures rise. Male Katydids rub their wings together to make sounds and call to females. Both male and females have ears on their legs. Isn't that cool?

MS

Mary Stone

3:44

Katydids will indeed eat garden plants or crops, but typically not enough to cause much damage. They are food for frogs, snakes, birds, small mammals, and spiders, as well as insects. Next in our nighttime chorus is the Fall field cricket that looks and sounds the same as Spring field crickets. Although they are different, they are large, black, and round, headed, and their song is the quintessential cricket chirp, writes songs of insects.com, which further describes it as a series of clear, loud chirps at the rate of about one per second or faster. Each chirp is a brief trill consisting of three to five pulses given too fast for the human ear to detect. Field crickets chirp both day and night from their hideouts but are typically quiet at dawn. Again, you can tune into these sounds on their website. It's lots of fun. 

Mary Stone

4:41

The Fall field crickets overwinter, and eggs hatch in the spring and begin to sing and mate in mid to late July until the frost kills them. The spring field crickets overwinter as nymphs mature quickly come spring and start their mating songs with sounds much like the spring peepers. They continue to sing until late June or early July, then finish laying their eggs before they, too, die off. Most times in mid-summer, both spring and fall field crickets are silent. That's something I hadn't considered. But there are times, isn't there, that we're not hearing all of these sounds in the trees. I enjoy those chorus free times, but I'm enjoying this visit as well. I hope you are, too. 

Mary Stone

5:27

Like the Agile Meadow Katydid, they feed on leaves, fruits, and dead insects, but they also feed on roots, flowers, and seeds, and they are sometimes cannibalistic, which kind of leaves me queasy. Sometimes, they eat flea beetles and insects from spider webs, grasshopper eggs, and the pupa of flies and caterpillars. The pupa, by the way, is the transformation between immature and mature stages, something I didn't know. It's the fall field crickets that find their way inside, searching for warmth as winter approaches and feeding on paper products, cotton, linen, wool and fur. So don't blame your holy dilemmas on moths only.

MS

Mary Stone

6:11

The last of the tree crickets we'll chat about is the snowy tree cricket, though tree cricket is somewhat misleading because they sing from understory plants in and around woodlands and find warmer spots closer to the ground and tree trunks when temperatures are colder. The name Snowy comes from being so pale that the crickets appear white and are coined the thermometer cricket. They say you can figure out the temperature by the rate of their pleasant, evenly spaced chirps. Count the number of chirps in 13 seconds and add 40 to find the degrees, and that's in Fahrenheit. The warmer it gets, the faster the chirp, beginning at dusk until morning and sometimes during cloudy days. They rub their wings together to make their eight, sometimes five, pulsed chirps that sound similar to spring peepers as well. 

Mary Stone

7:02

I'm rather enjoying that they say these fall critters sound like spring peepers, as those of you know who follow the podcast, I adore that spring peeper sound from the screen porch. Like the previous nighttime singers, the snowy tree cricket eats a variety of flowers, fungi, and leaves but does minor damage. Though. When the adults eat fruits, the holes left behind can encourage rot. They eat aphids and scale insects, too, helping us in the Garden of Life and serving other critters as a source of food, a beautiful thing, a beautiful chorus. Garden Dilemmas? AskMaryStone.com.

Mary Stone

7:45

So, as I said earlier, there are many other nighttime singers, too. So have some fun identifying yours using that nifty website, songs of insects.com. Maybe I'll pipe that in while driving. It would be a neat companion to my CD on frogs and the toad's mating calls that we spoke about way back in episode 30, Attracting Toads Frog Watch USA. You're going to think I'm weird, but that is the only CD I have in my truck.

Mary Stone

8:15

Funny thing that happened while hiking up at Blue Mountain Lake on Sunday. Jolee who somehow got involved in a Yellow Jacket nest and learned that some insects can sting; although she wasn't badly hurt, gratefully, but there was a cricket jumping around on this massive rock at Hemlock Pond, which is at the Blue Mountain Lake area, and She was stalking it, getting close, hesitating, poking at it. It was hilarious. It was so funny to watch. And I got a photo of it, and I did some identification. I think it's a Carolina Grasshopper, but I think I'm done with crickets for tonight, or grasshoppers or other night critters. 

Mary Stone

8:57

Speaking of Katydids, that's my nickname for my niece. You may recall my mention of my soulful twin brother Bill's daughter in Episode 129, Saving Snapping Turtles Lifts Spirits. Soon after Bill passed away, almost 12 years ago, I struggled over worry for his daughter, a teen at the time, and I felt helpless to help her, wishing to step in where Bill left off. It was an all-consuming worry that I had for her. Then I came upon that parched baby snapping turtle crossing the road, and I saved him. There was a miracle in that story that released my worry and taught me to love and let go like a leaf in the water. We have no control over the currents. Let go of your worry for my daughter and send healing, love, and light were the words that I imagined Bill saying to me.

Mary Stone

9:46

In recent months, we helped her get into a community home thanks to an angel agency representative who, on her day off, met our niece at a restaurant where she was hanging out. She stayed about two weeks and then hit the road again. We pray she finds her way, but I've let go of the worry consuming my mind. We all have our lives to live, and we make choices, and hopefully, the choices will lead her to safety, comfort, and healing, something I wish for all of us as we go through trying times. So that was a bit of a diversion, I suppose, but I hope you don't mind me sharing that personal story, and I know many of you have been sending prayers and concern, and I so appreciate it.

Mary Stone

10:31

So, thanks for coming by during this nighttime chorus of insects. I hope you enjoyed it. I enjoyed being out here, and I don't know. I just look forward to each week with you, and so I appreciate all of you that tune in and share your stories with me. Keep them coming at AskMaryStone@gmail.com. Look forward to next time on the screen porch. Nighty night singers. 

Mary Stone

10:58

You can follow Garden Dilemmas on Facebook or online @gardendilemas.com and on Instagram at hashtag Mary Elaine Stone. Garden Dilemmas, Delights, and Discoveries is produced by Alex Bartling. Thanks for coming by. I look forward to chatting again from my screen porch and always remember to embrace the unexpected in this garden of life. Have a great day.