GRASSHOPPERS AND WOOLLY BEARS

      There's been many warm, October afternoons here in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania when I've seen several each of differential grasshoppers and woolly bear caterpillars on some of the farmland roads I drive on.  And, no matter how many of each I see each autumn over the years, they're presence on country roads is still interesting to me, mainly because they are signs of fall's arrival in local cropland.  I swerve where I can to avoid running over leaping grasshoppers and rippling caterpillars I see on rural roads.  

     Both these kinds of insects consume plants, including grass, along farmland roadsides.  And both adapted to living along those roadsides where sheltering vegetation may be mowed occasionally, but not plowed, allowing insects time to develop to maturity.   

     Differential grasshoppers are the largest kind of at least a few species of grasshoppers along rural roadsides.  Other kinds of common, roadside grasshoppers include red-legged, spur-throated, meadow and American grasshoppers that jump over roadside vegetation before a person's approach on foot.  But only differentials regularly leap onto black top, rural roads where they are most visible. 

     All these grasshopper species, including differentials, are camouflaged among roadside vegetation.  Differentials are dull gray-green and about one and a half inches long.  And they have black, herring-bone patterns on their massive, yellow-brown, hind legs they use for jumping. 

     Though small and camouflaged, some of these grasshoppers, including differentials, are preyed on by American kestrels, screech owls, red foxes, skunks and other types of predators in cropland.  Obviously, these grasshoppers are part of several food chains.

     Sometime in October, fertilized female differentials push their abdomens into the soil to lay eggs.  After egg-laying and during heavy frosts of that month locally, male and female differentials, and other kinds of grasshoppers, die.  Grasshoppers survive winter only in the egg stage of development.  Those eggs hatch into tiny grasshoppers during the warmth of the nest spring.

     Famous and beloved larvae of the Isabella moth, pretty woolly bear caterpillars have tufts of black bristles at each end of their two-inch bodies and reddish-brown bristles in the middle.  Those stiff bristles protect the caterpillars from some predators.  

     Reddish-brown bristles indicate how old a larva is.  Many of those bristles note the larva is young, but few of them show the larva is older.

     Feeling the cold nights of October, woolly bears travel to find a sheltered spot in the soil to spend winter.  Some of them hump across country roads in their quest for a secluded place.  And that is where they are most readily seen by human admirers.  

     Some people purposefully go out of their way on local, rural roads in October to see the lovely woolly bear caterpillars because they deem those creatures as much part of fall as colored leaves, migrating geese and harvested corn fields.  Even the colors of these caterpillars' bristles are in keeping with warm autumn colors.

     Woolly bears spend winter in protective, insulating soil.  In spring these handsome caterpillars pupate and emerge as Isabella moths ready to mate and lay eggs for another generation of pretty woolly bear caterpillars.               

     Differential grasshoppers and woolly bear caterpillars are insects that can be quite obvious and interesting on country roads during October.  They are truly intriguing parts of autumn every year, at least here in Lancaster County.     







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