Tidd Cricket 



The late summer and fall would be a quiet time in 

 my apple tree community if all the insects that live 

 here suddenly decided to stop singing. 



I hear a field cricket rasping out his cheerful, chirp- 

 ing song. The male is the tunesmith, and this grass- 

 roots minstrel is entertaining me with persistent music. 

 He has a large shiny head, a stubby body and power- 

 ful jumping legs, and his voice is in his wings. When 

 the male feels like singing he raises his wings 

 normally carried against his body and shuffles them 

 back and forth, dragging the scraping edge of one 

 across the roughened veins of the other. The sound 

 thus produced is amplified by efficient sounding 

 boards his stiff, ridged wings. As he performs, his 

 lady friend listens with ears located just below her 

 front pair of knees. 



The cricket in the picture is an adult female, identi- 

 fiable by the inch-long spear extending from the tip 

 of her abdomen. She uses this ovipositor to place her 

 tiny cricket eggs down in the soil. They will hatch 

 the following spring. 



Young wingless crickets appearing in early spring 

 are shy creatures, venturing out only at night to seek 

 edible vegetation. But by the time fall arrives, these 

 crickets will be fully grown, and will have lost much 

 of their shyness; then they will be bold enough to 

 emerge during the day to seek mates and to deposit 

 their eggs in the soil. 



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