Buggy Sounds of Summer

By LARRY WEBER Illustrations by TAINA LITWAK

buggyeeeeer di-dee-dee wee-eeeeeeeer,wee-eeeeeeeer, eeeeer eet ri z soundsweeee-eeeeeer,weeeeetreet-treet-tr of treet-treet-treet weeeee weeee-eeeeeer,shi-ri-ri-ri-ri-ri-ri- tic-tic-tic tzip-tzip-t wee-eeeeeeeer,eeeeer summertreet-treet-treet zip weeee-eeeeeer,weeeee tic-tic-tic tzip-tzip-t twee-dee-dee-dee-dee-deetic-tic-tic tzip-tzip-tzip

Biking to a park on a hot July day, you hear clicking and buzzing coming from roadside grasses. Returning at dusk, you tune into chirping and creaking too. In the days and weeks that follow, more buzzing and whining calls resound from treetops. Welcome to the hot sounds of the singing bugs of summer. Crickets, katydids, and cicadas perform in this warm-weather chorus. Th e males call for mates. Instead of using throats and lungs to sing, these insects make sounds using other specialized parts on the skeleton on the outside of the body. Because they are cold blooded, insects need hot days to warm up their instruments. You won’t hear them on a cool morning. But if you listen, SP. you will notice them around midday. By late

TIBICENS aft ernoon or early evening, more insects will have joined the chorus. CICADA, CICADA,

36 Minnesota Conservation Volunteer July–August 2004 37 Tree crickets are pale green with broad wings. Some species live in trees and bushes, Crickets and Katydids especially raspberry and blackberry, and tend to sing at night. Some tree crickets live in grasses and Crickets and katydids belong to other. As it rubs, its wings vibrate. weeds, and call both day the insect order Orthoptera, which Th e vibration amplifi es the sound. 4 Use and night. Though some means “straight wings.” Th ough Th is singing style, known as me, the snowy chirp, most make a very long trill: treet- many do have straight wings, some stridulation, sounds like buzzes, tree cricket, to tell the temperature: Count treet-treet. When have rounded or curved wings. chips, chirps, or clicks. the number of chirps in 13 they synchronize Crickets and katydids make seconds, then add 40 to their calls into sounds with their wings. Th e Crickets. Crickets hold their estimate the degrees one loud sound, it insect rubs a sharp ridge on one wings fl at on the back. Th eir long, Fahrenheit. seems to come from wing against a rough part of the slender antennae extend beyond everywhere at once. the body. Th e female has a single Larry Weber is a science teacher at long tube, called an ovipositor, for Th e Marshall School in Duluth. laying her eggs in soil or plants. Katydids. Katydids look like called meadow grasshoppers), large green grasshoppers with conehead katydids, and shieldback super-long antennae. Indeed, katydids (also called shieldback Two common kinds of fi eld crickets another name for these insects is grasshoppers). Th ey live in the sing chirping songs in Minnesota. Listen long-horned grasshoppers. vegetation and feed on leaves. A for spring field crickets from May to July. Minnesota is home to four few will eat other insects. Katydids Their cousins, the fall field crickets, sing start calling in mid-July and keep from July to October. female kinds of native katydids: bush 6 katydids, meadow katydids (also going until October. We’ve been kept as pets in Greece, China, and other places for 2,500 Shieldback katydids, the years, mostly for the male’s sweet singing and first to call in summer, buzz softly for tough fighting. 4

male WEBER AND FEMALE FIELD CRICKETS BY LARRY MALE two to five seconds at a time.

Ground crickets make a series of tch-tch brrreeet-brreet-brreet soft, high-pitched trills or buzzes. Their tchtchtchtchrrrtch brrreeet-brreet-brreet pulsating call often seems like background noise, resounding day and night from late tch-tch brrreeet-brreet tchtchtchtchrrrrtch brrreeet-brreet-brreet summer into October. Ground crickets are dark brown and often striped. You might Meadow katydids see these tiny crickets scatter 3 in front of a lawn mower. 6 are the next to call. All Ø afternoon and into the Ø evening on hot days, you can hear their click, click, click followed by louder buzzes. PHOTOGRAPHS BY LARRY WEBER

38 WALKER J. THOMAS Minnesota Conservation Volunteer July–August 2004 39 More katydids Cricket wings zeep-zeep- zeep-zeep-zeep- Big sound, little size zeep-zeep-zeep- zeep-zeep e male crickets have very special wings. Not only do

we use our wings to fl y, but we also use them to make

Ø sounds. ➟ W ➟ 6 Our secret? Close to the WINGS MOVE APART . . . Bush katydids, camou- place where our wings meet, flaged on leaves of shrubs and we have a fi le and scraper. tsip-tsip- harp tsip-tsip-tsip- meadow grasses, call in late The tiny row of teeth called harp tsip-tsip- afternoon. Their sharp zick call a fi le hides beneath the top scraper file tsip-tsip sounds like crunching a potato wing. The bottom wing has HARPS MOVE IN chip. After dark, the males make the scraper. The scraper edge AND OUT 6 Ø a creaking zeep-zeep-zeep song that curves to fi t between the Conehead katydids females sometimes answer with a teeth. call from fields and roadsides little chip. When we close our wings, of grasses and sedges on the scraper trips across ➟ THEN CLOSE TOGETHER ➟ warm summer nights. Males each tooth and makes a tiny repeat a loud, quick tsip-tsip- pulse of sound. Back and tsip or a loud, steady buzz. forth the cricket’s scraper moves, a little bit like the way you might scrape your fingernail across the teeth of a comb, only much, much faster. (Common field crickets play 4,000 teeth The name per second.) The comes from a large species male katydid uses cricket wings closeup found in the southern and only one wing as northeastern United States. a scraper and one Pioneers thought the katydid as a file, and he scraper file call sounded like “Katy-did” makes sounds only or “Katy-she-did,” and so they when closing his dubbed the noisemaker the wings. katydid. This species is not This little sound native to Minnesota, but it grows louder as it was accidentally transported bounces through here years ago and can now be the broadcasting found in the Twin Cities area. parts of our wings, called the harp and mirror in crickets, and into the air. Future mates can find us Katydids and crickets easily by just following our have ears on their front legs. harp songs. Unfortunately, predators mirror Now put me down! katydid can hear us too.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY LARRY WEBER ear Susan Binkley

40 Minnesota Conservation Volunteer July–August 2004 41 zee-oo- zee-oo-zee-oo-zee-oo- zee-oo-zee-oo-zee-oo- Cicadas zee-oo-Øzeeooo-oo-oo-oo Cicadas belong to the insect order Hemiptera. A cicada is 1 to 2 inches long, with a blunt head and clear LARRY WEBER wings. Similar to true bugs, it has The Say’s pruinose5 cicada also lives in hardwood forests. It a mouthpart for sucking. Like a LARRY WEBER drinking straw with a sharp end, pulsates its loud, memorable zee-oo- zee-oo for 15 to 30 seconds at a time. The Canadian cicada,5 the cicada’s mouthpart can pierce a It calls during the brightest sunlit found in northern Minnesota pine woody plant and suck up sap. time of day and does an evening and aspen woods, starts calling Th e female cicada has an encore. Pruinose cicadas are common by the end of May and continues ovipositor folded under her abdo- residents of woodlots, roadsides, and for two months. Its rapid, high- men. She uses it to slice into the tip towns in much of the country. pitched lisps last about a minute. of a branch and deposit eggs inside. RON SORIN The prairie cicada is smaller than Aft er the eggs hatch, the young other cicadas in Minnesota. Rare, it is cicadas (called nymphs) drop to the EMERGING CICADA BY SKIP MOODY, DEMBINSKY PHOTO ASSOCIATES 3disappearing along with its prairie habitat. ground and use special front legs to ture, and blood, splitting open its Nymphs rely on the roots of compass-plant tunnel into the soil. Underground, exoskeleton. Eventually, the grown- for food. they feed on root sap and grow in up cicada emerges and leaves its dark burrows for many years. exoskeleton on the bark. Each cicada crawls out of the Males begin to call for a mate, and Periodic cicadas don’t live in Minnesota, but they are famous because ground and up onto a tree or females listen for their courting call. they emerge in huge swarms in the other woody plant. Th en the cicada Aft er mating and laying eggs, the central and eastern United States. They nymph infl ates itself with air, mois- adults die. live 13 or 17 years (depending on the zzzzzzzzzzzz species) underground. The largest of all broods began emerg- The dog-day cicada calls zzzzzzzzzz ing in May 2004 and will not emerge from early July into September, again until May 2021. It filled forests, the hottest part of summer, zzzzzz parks, and yards in numbers exceeding known as the dog days. Its high- the trillions! pitched, whining song lasts a Ø Some people call cicadas locusts, but minute and resembles the sound they are not. The confusion happens be- of a distant buzz saw. The male4 cause locusts, which are a kind of large usually sings around midday and grasshopper, sometimes show up in tre- again in late afternoon. Though mendous swarms. However, locust swarms widespread in the state, dog- are very destructive. They devour entire day cicadas are most common in crops, while cicadas feed only on plant hardwood forests, where they call juices and do minor damage to trees. from high in the trees. LARRY WEBER BROOD EMERGENCE, A LARGE PERIODIC CICADA REMAINS OF ASSOCIATES BY GARY MESZAROS, DEMBINSKY PHOTO

42 Minnesota Conservation Volunteer July–August 2004 43 Male cicada sound systems TEACHERS: Add the Volunteer to your tool kit! Loudest of all cicada cross section hether you gather with students in a CONTRACTED classroom, along a nature trail, or around timbal Wthe kitchen table, Minnesota Conservation timbal ➟ ➟ Volunteer belongs in your pack of learning tools. From the magic of eggs to the rumble of weather, If only Young Naturalists stories in every issue teach timbal summer would muscle youngsters about their home in Minnesota’s last longer! operculum woods, prairies, and lake country. tympanum Start your subscription this fall by ordering your operculum 2004–05 classroom set today. Your students will receive their own Volunteer magazine six times a year for just $3.60 per student. Plus you’ll receive RELAXED time, each little rib on your own free copy of each issue and each online teachers guide with lessons and activities. the timbal makes a quick sound. When we relax these muscles, the timbals pop back out. Our timbals ■✔Yes! Send classroom set to: pop out and in many times Please start my very fast. Sounds from classroom set with each rib run together and this issue (select one): TEACHER NAME make a buzz. ● Sept.–Oct. 2004 SCHOOL NAME Scientists think our ● Nov.–Dec. 2004 e male cicadas expanded abdomen ● Jan.–Feb. 2005 ADDRESS are loud! One changes the pitch and ● March–April 2005 of us is the makes the sound louder, CITY STATE ZIP+4 W ● May–June 2005 loudest insect in the world. He’s but we haven’t given up this ● an African cicada recorded at 106.7 secret yet. July–Aug. 2005 PHONE E-MAIL decibels (as loud as a chain saw) On the underside, we have two NUMBER OF STUDENT COPIES x $3.60 = $ TOTAL COST at 1 meter. tympana. We use them like ampli- Our noisy song starts in stiff but fiers to make our sound go far. ■ ■ flexible ribs found in parts called To do this, we have to open our PAYMENT: Charge my credit card MasterCard VISA timbals. Only males have a pair of opercula, flaps that cover and Credit card number timbals: one on each side, under protect our tympana. our wings. Females don’t have timbals, but ■ ■ ■ ■ -■ ■ ■ ■-■ ■ ■ ■-■ ■ ■ ■ When we want to attract a they do have tympana. They use EXPIRATION DATE female, we lower our abdomen them to hear our mating calls. and puff it out. Then we use We may be small, but we have a CARDHOLDER SIGNATURE our timbal muscles to pull in our really cool way to make awesome, ■ I’ve enclosed a check payable to Minnesota Conservation Volunteer. timbals. The timbals buckle like loud sounds. ■ I’ve enclosed a purchase order from my school. a squeezed pop can. One at a Susan Binkley CG04 Please send this form and your payment to: Minnesota Conservation Volunteer, Minnesota DNR, 500 Lafayette Road, St. Paul 55155-4010. Questions? Contact Meredith McNab, meredith.mcnab@dnr. 44 Minnesota Conservation Volunteer state.mn.us, 651-215-0615.