MY FAVORITE CRICKETS

     My favorite three kinds of crickets in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania are field, spotted camel and northern mole crickets.  Crickets are the little cousins of grasshoppers, and are built much like them.  But these crickets are seldom seen because they are secretive, stay under cover and are camouflaged.  Most people don't see them often, if at all.  But many people hear the charming, mechanical sounds they make.  

     All these cricket species are vegetarians, eating a variety of plant material, each kind in its own niche.  And each type of cricket is part of food chains of who eats whom.  Birds, toads, snakes, shrews, skunks, centipedes and other kinds of predators consume their shares of crickets during warmer months when crickets are active and available.  

     Field crickets are dark gray, less than an inch long and live under decaying plants in fields and along rural roadsides.  Males begin producing their pleasant "chirping" by the end of May, especially along country roads, and continue to do so until heavy frost in October.  They rub their wings together to make that seemingly incessant sound that draws female field crickets to them for mating.  And the males' boisterous, high-pitched fiddling is a pleasure for us to hear, especially during those long, warm summer evenings when the scent of hay and honeysuckle flowers are heavy in the air and male fireflies are flashing their cold, abdominal lights into the darkening night.   

     This species overwinters as eggs laid singly in the protective ground.  The young hatch in the warmth of the following spring.  

     Camel crickets are tan with darker markings, have humped thoraxes, and are about an inch long.  They usually live hidden under rocks, and fallen leaves, logs and bark on woodland floors.  I have also found them under trash barrels in wooded parks.  

     Camel crickets are nocturnal and males make no courting sounds, which makes this attractive and interesting species almost completely overlooked.  Their eggs are laid singly in the ground.

     But I think mole crickets are the most intriguing of these wonderful, local species.  Mole crickets live in shallow tunnels in moist-soil meadows.  I've often heard the males' unique, mechanical calling, that sounds to me like the raspy croaking of a mysterious, underground frog species, chanting out loudly during September and into October.  

     Over an inch long, the chunky, soil-brown mole crickets are well-adapted to living in burrows.  They have large, spade-like front legs for digging in loose soil, like moles, and small back legs because they can't leap in their tunnels.    

     Female mole crickets lay clusters of eggs among plant roots in the backs of their tunnels.  Their growing progeny eat those plant roots.

     These are my favorite crickets, for a variety of reasons.  Though they are not often seen, or well known, they are an interesting part of local fauna, particularly the intriguing stridulations of male field crickets and mole crickets.

     

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