418 



ANNUAL KEPOET SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1923 



The katydids are all very particular about keeping their feet clean, 

 for it is quite necessary to have their adhesive pads always in perfect 

 working order, but they are so continually stopping whatever they 

 may be doing to lick one foot or another, like a dog scratching fleas, 

 that it looks more like an ingrown habit with them than a necessary 

 act of cleanliness. The fork-tailed katydid is a very unpretentious 

 singer and has only one note, a high pitched zeep reiterated several 

 times in succession. But it does not repeat the series continuously 

 as most other singers do, and its music is likely to be lost to human 

 ears in the general din from the jazzing bands of crickets. Yet 

 occasionally its soft seep, zeep^ zeep may be heard from a near-by 

 bush or from the lower branches of a tree. 



Fig. 8. — The oblong-winged katydid, AmWycorypha oblongifolia, male 



The notes of other species have been described as zikk, zikk. zikk, 

 or zeet, zeet, zeet, and some observers have recorded two notes for 

 the same species. Thus Scudder says that the day notes and the* 

 night notes of Scudderia curvicavda differ considerably, the day 

 note being represented by bzrwi, the night note, which is only half as 

 long as the other, by tchw. (With a little practice the reader should 

 be able to give a good imitation of this katydid.) Scudder further- 

 more says that they change from the day note to the night note when 

 a cloud passes over the sun as they are singing by day. 



The genus Amhlycorypha includes a group of species having wider 

 wings than those of the bush katydids. Most of them are indifferent 

 singers; but one, the oblong-winged katydid (A. dblongi folia), 

 found over all the eastern half of the United States and southern 



