THE GRASSHOPPER'S COUSINS 



commonest species, and one that occurs over most of the 

 United States, is the fork-tailed bush katydid (Scudderia 

 furcata). Figure 21 shows a male and a female, the female 

 in the act of cleaning the pads on one of her hind feet. The 

 katydids are all very particular about keeping their feet 

 clean, for it is quite essential to have their adhesive pads 

 always in perfect working order; but they are so con- 

 tinually 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 an unpreten- 

 tious singer and has only one note, a high-pitched zeep re- 

 iterated several times in succession. But it does not re- 

 peat 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 zeep, zeep, zeep may be heard from a near-by bush 

 or from the lower branches of a tree. 



The notes of other species have been described as zikk, 

 zikk, zikk, or zeet, zeet, zeet, and some observers have re- 

 corded two notes for the same species. Thus Scudder says 

 that the day notes and the night notes of Scudderia curvi- 

 cauda 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 

 furthermore 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 Amblycorypha includes a group of species hav- 

 ing wider wings than those of the bush katydids. Most of 

 them are indifferent singers; but one, the oblong-winged 

 katydid (A. oblongifolia), found over all the eastern half of 

 the United States and southern Canada, is noted for its 

 large size and dignified manners. A male (Fig. 22), kept 

 by the writer one summer in a cage, never once lost his 

 decorum by the humiliation of confinement. He lived ap- 



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