Crickets and the Temperature

Final, final update, November 4, 2022:

Last ? Snowy Tree Cricket singing in Perrysburg, Ohio. Not expecting any more days with temperatures in the 70’s, I certainly was NOT expecting any temps of 70° at 7 PM. ( The past week of those daytime temps. did not produce warm temps after dark.)
So I drove to check out places I last heard True Katydids and Snowy Tree Crickets. Low and behold perhaps the same one singing in tree line as last week, on Keller Road at 7:55 PM singing at 66°, on my car thermometer, 69° on my phone for Rossford, Ohio. Home thermometer showed 65° when I left.

Final update on 2022 chirper season: November 2, 2022.

I have been living in this area for eight years and I have been following three populations of Snowy Tree Crickets. The final 2022 update.

We had another 70°F day. I made sure I stopped by Keller Road to see if the Snowy Tree Cricket I heard last week. I heard only some ground crickets as pretty much all the leaves were gone.

And at our Lot 176 “my” Snowy wasn’t singing as most leaves in the area he was last heard are gone. I had about a half dozen Jumping Bush Crickets singing and a ground cricket across the creek.
The last place I have been checking is the population in the line of crab apple trees at Friendly Village’s entrance Boulevard. No leaves equals no tree crickets despite the temperatures at 7 PM was 64°F.

At the place I walk the dogs there is a small shrubby area that today had a different species of tree crickets and a dozen ground crickets singing. Below is a recording of them.

This is my records of the past three years first day they were heard and last day.

Today’s Nature Note, October 30, 2022:

Having cooler temperatures for several weeks, I thought it was the last time I would hear my two favorite chirpers this year: True Katydids and Snowy Tree Crickets. So much to my surprise after several days of 70°F , they both were singing. The Snowy in my yard during the day and a couple True Katydids singing after dark at a local population. Below are two videos of them singing.

October 22, 2022 a Snowy Tree Cricket sang for several nights after two weeks of colder temps that prevent them from singing after dark. Several days of temperatures in the 70’s allowed them (elsewhere) and the one at my house sing. Being the last one, he is  probably desperate. He sang for about two hours into the dark and one night it was still singing at 2AM when it was still 60°F.

Fig. 2 Same location; Sept 29, only Jumping Bush Crickets and other crickets singing in less than 60 degrees.

Fig. 1 Keller Road Snowy Tree Crickets on Sept 14, 2021

The Snowy Tree Cricket (see photo below courtesy of the website “Songs of Insects”, stops singing between 60 and 65 degrees F.  But other species, like the Fall Field Crickets, most of  the local ground crickets and the Jumping Bush Cricket all sing below 60°F and I have heard them singing at 50°. See video above (Fig.2) of a cooler night (Sept 29, 2021) at the same location the Snowies were singing on the 14th.

The songs of crickets and their relationship with temperatures is very interesting. Just last week it was warm enough for several Snowy Tree Crickets on the Keller Road tree line along the cornfield.  See first recording. (Fig. 1.) And I have heard Snowy Tree Crickets singing there since then.

Below photos courtesy of the website “Songs of Insects”. They have photos, the songs and everything you want to know on over 300 singing insects of North America.

Field cricket
http://songsofinsects.com/wp-content/uploads/Field-Cricket.png

Ground cricket
http://songsofinsects.com/wp-content/uploads/insect_musicians_eunem-caro_LE_SLIDE.jpg

Jumping Bush Cricket
http://songsofinsects.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Orocharis_saltator_FC1.jpg

Snowing Tree Cricket
http://songsofinsects.com/wp-content/uploads/insect_musicians_oecan-fult_WH_DIGI.jpg

Gary Lovell
Copyright. 2022

Spring Field Cricket

Last instar of Spring Field Cricket

On October 26, I found this cricket inside the church I work at. A Spring Field Cricket in it’s last instar, the last nymphal stage before it gets full grown with wings. Normally they would hibernate under rocks or logs. This one was hoping to live in a warm building. I removed it to outside.

Next Spring it will come out to finish growing and most probably start singing around May 15th or so.

For more explanation and history see this article.

Two Field Cricket Broods

Gary Lovell
Copyright. 2022

Autumn Tree Colors

The fall colors are unbelievably beautiful this year. And it’s happening at the “normal” time of the year in Northwest Ohio.  The newspaper article* pointed out the conditions are right for vivid colors: a dry finish of summer,  sunny early fall days and crisp nights,” per the interviewed metrologist* which helped make the tree colors on time this year. Usually the peak is in between the 2nd week and end of October.
In most of the past fifteen years the global warming or regional warming or local temperature and/or microclimates or whatever has contributed to most trees not changing or losing leaves until November.
    We have lived in the manufactured home park called Meadows of Perrysburg since 2020 that has mostly Bradford Pears trees.
Bradford Pears are not a favorite tree of mine, but I only recently found out they are imported and recently declared invasive. The past two autumns their leaves were the last to change and they were still green in December.
This year even they are turning maroon at this time along with the newer red maples in the park.
Photos are below.

Bradford Pear Trees changing color in October.

A view near Bass Pro Shops in Rossford, Ohio

Twenty eight years ago my wife Barb and I got married on October 15th. Our overnight stop on the way to the Smokey Mountains was at an Ohio State park near Cincinnati in southern Ohio. We took lots of pictures and video. Later we discovered the camera had no film! We said it’s okay we will stop there on the way back about 9 days later. We arrived to re-create the photos and nearly all the colors were gone.  We had video of the same scenes but we were quite disappointed.
  So I do have specific memories from 1994 and earlier of the “normal” fall colors happening around here during the last three weeks of October.
I also have a photo of a maple tree fully covered in red leaves taken on November 20, 2005, one of the first time noticing autumn colors a little or alot late. I wish I could put my hands on that photo but it was pre-camera cell phones.
So if you can, check out the leaf colors going south from Toledo, Ohio area this year before they are gone.

Bradford Pear Trees with the Red Maple on the right almost bare in Meadows of Perrysburg.

Prairie Preserve on Oregon Road on Chrysler property.

Another view near Bass Pro Shops.

At Swan Creek Metro Park in Toledo.

Swan Creek Metro Park. October 2022

Red Maple on Left and the rest are Bradford Pear Trees in Mobile Home Park.

*The Toledo Blade October 20, 2022

Gary Lovell
Copyright. 2022

Elusive True Katydid Article Part Two

I love the feature on Facebook that shows memories from past posts. And today October 21, 2022 we get an unseasonally warm temperature day just like the post below. I didn’t have this blog then. So I checked the area today and I hear Jumping Bush Crickets and Ground Crickets and a Tree Cricket. At 11:00 PM the temp was still 52 degrees and a half dozen Jumping Bush Crickets were still singing. Below is more on the True Katydid which I did not hear. But I didn’t get to a place where I know they live when the temp was above 65. Tomorrow is supposed to warm again. I will try to check the closest population.

Nature Note from October 21, 2017. On this unseasonably warm evening I wanted to not only walk Callie but to see if I could still hear true katydids somewhere,

(http://entnemdept.ufl.edu/Walker/buzz/141a.htm )

as we still have not had a frost yet. So I went to Black Swamp Preserve near Bowling Green to check them out. I have not been there at night in the fall to see if the True Katydids were even there. And there were about a dozen along the bike path. Along with a couple of Snowy Tree Crickets (late for them also.)
The third week of October is not supposed to have the katydids still singing for several reasons.

First: is since they only sing after dark and above 55 degrees, there would normally not be too many late October evenings that would be conducive to their needs. Second: normally the first frosts in this area would have killed them by this time. And lastly the food they eat- leaves would be changing color and falling.

So this is unusual to say the least however this is not a record breaker yet. I have been capturing, and observing this species closely since 1986. In that time I had some katydids in a cage on the back porch of Watson Ave in Toledo Ohio, sheltered but still outside. That male was still singing on October 26 & 28, 1993. And a wild population at Ottawa Park had 6 singing on the 28th. The record breaker was in 2008 when I heard one still singing on November 3rd on Eastbrook in West Toledo. With a frost still not predicted anytime soon we may break another record. Latest Nature Note October 21 ,2017.

Gary Lovell
Copyright. 2019

Capturing the Elusive True Katydid