Katydid 



The daytime cicada drumming has stopped. The battalion 

 of cicadas in the community have ended their season. And 

 what a comfort it is to be rid of that constant, ear-piercing 

 humdrumming on a sweltering, breezeless day. 



Now it's the muffled nighttime fiddling of a katydid that I 

 hear a pleasant reminder that hot days are slipping by and 

 that cool evenings are not far away. 



The male katydid's concert is his serenade to the lady katy- 

 dids of the apple tree community and not just to those a 

 few feet away, either, for on a still night his song carries a 

 quarter of a mile or more. Senor Katydid produces his music 

 with wing instruments instead of fiddling with his legs, as 

 does a meadow grasshopper. As he sounds his familiar katydid 

 or katydidn't, he rubs a scraper at the base of his left wing over 

 a file-like row of ridges at the base of his right wing. He's a 

 lefthanded performer. 



A katydid's head has a horselike look, but instead of ears 

 it has a pair of long antennae. The katydid's actual "ears" are 

 on the shins of its front legs; in these slit-like openings are the 

 organs with which one katydid listens to another's music. 



In the fall the female katydid deposits her disc-shaped eggs 

 on twigs and leaves. She cements them in place in neat rows, 

 one overlapping the other. In the spring the baby katydids (or 

 "nymphs") emerge, without wings. Pale at birth, they eat and 

 molt and gradually take on the green hues of the leaves upon 

 which they feed. The males begin their katydid fiddling when 

 their wings are fully developed. 



36 



