Another Season in the Books

October 30, 2022 at 6:17 am (singing insects)
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by Carl Strang

In earlier posts I outlined the most significant finds in this year’s research on singing insects. The season was sprinkled with smaller delights, too, and I am pleased to call it successful. My game plan emphasized visiting new sites and trying to plug distributional holes for some species. I looked at 11 new sites, added 20 county records for all species combined, and closed the book on three species, i.e., I now have found them in every county or, at least, every county where I expect to find them. Those were the gray ground cricket (Allonemobius griseus), which I found at Chicago’s Montrose Park on September 6 for a Cook County record; the four-spotted tree cricket (Oecanthus quadripunctatus), which I now have documented in all 22 counties of my study region; and the oblong-winged katydid (Amblycorypha oblongifolia), which stubbornly had refused to reveal itself in LaPorte County, Indiana, until I heard a few singing on August 6 at Kingsbury Fish & Wildlife Area.

I also found new north locations for two of the species that are expanding their range from the south: the slow-tinkling trig (Anaxipha tinnulenta) at the Grand Mere Lakes in Berrien County, Michigan, and the handsome trig (Phyllopalpus pulchellus) at the northern end of Grassy Lake Forest Preserve for a Lake County, Illinois, record.

Now for a few photos of critters found along the way. I wanted to clarify the relatively early, long-trilling tree crickets I have been hearing at DuPage County’s Springbrook Prairie Forest Preserve. These proved to be a mix of four-spotted and Forbes’s (O. forbesi) tree crickets.

Forbes’s tree cricket from Springbrook Prairie, temporarily chilled for photographic purposes

I had visited Cook County’s Penny Road Pond preserve a few times before, but this year got into a large part of it that was new to me.

Texas bush katydid (Scudderia texensis), a site record for Penny Road Pond.

One of the new sites I visited was Spring Lake Forest Preserve in Cook County. As I walked a woodland trail I saw an interesting looking grasshopper, which I concluded was a sprinkled grasshopper (Chloealtis conspersa). This was the year’s second county record for the species, the first being the subject of an earlier post.

Sprinkled grasshopper nymph at Spring Lake

The remaining two photos are from a September 2 visit to Pulaski County, Indiana.

This female spotted ground cricket (Allonemobius maculatus) at Tippecanoe River State Park posed to give me a better photo than I have taken in past encounters with the species.
I continue to be impressed by ovipositor lengths in female straight-lanced meadow katydids (Conocephalus strictus) like this one at the Winamac Fish & Wildlife Area.

Looking ahead to 2023, my top priorities again will be visits to new sites, and efforts to conclude searches for species in counties where I have yet to find them but where they are likely to occur.

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A DuPage County Record

July 25, 2022 at 5:47 am (singing insects)
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by Carl Strang

I have been studying singing insects for more than 15 years, now, so I seldom find a new species in my home county of DuPage in Illinois. I paid a visit to the West Chicago Prairie Forest Preserve on the July 4th weekend to assess the population of prairie cicadas (Okanagana balli). I was pleased to get a higher than usual count of 13 singing males on my survey route, and was heading out when I heard the zuzz-zuzz-zuzz of a stridulating grasshopper.

Members of the stridulating slant-faced grasshopper subfamily don’t sing very often, so I want to pursue them whenever I hear one. I figured that it would prove to be a marsh meadow grasshopper (Chorthippus curtipennis), which I had found on that preserve a couple of years previous, but the plot thickened when I found that the singer was in a clump of low brush, an unlikely spot for Chorthippus. I moved slowly, taking a single step between the bouts of song. I was close to the source when up hopped the singer.

It was a sprinkled grasshopper (Chloealtis conspersa)

Previously I had found these mainly in areas with sand soils, so a county record on DuPage’s clay soils opened the door to new possibilities.

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Shaking Out the Photo Bag

January 26, 2019 at 8:57 am (reptiles and amphibians, singing insects)
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by Carl Strang

Before I get going on a new series of posts, I want to share a few photos that didn’t fit into last year’s topics.

This seemed to be a good year for gray treefrogs across the region. I frequently ran into small ones.

Gray treefrogs can change colors, making themselves green to blend in.

For some reason, they often rested on milkweed leaves.

It was a good year of singing insect field work. Plenty of questions remain unanswered.

One of the smaller ones was the identity of this grasshopper nymph at the Indiana Kankakee Sands. My best guess is sprinkled grasshopper, which I found there in adult form later in the season.

An interesting observation in the Tefft Savanna Nature Preserve (within Indiana’s Jasper-Pulaski Fish & Wildlife Area) was that short-winged green grasshoppers (Dichromorpha viridis) were the usual green color in wetlands but were brown in the savannas.

A mating pair of brown variants.

Late in the season I visited my friends Lisa Rainsong and Wendy Partridge, who live in the Cleveland suburbs. One goal was to see jumping bush crickets out in the foliage and branches of trees and shrubs. In the Chicago region they almost always stick to the trunks of trees and are difficult to see.

Sure enough, within a few minutes of searching I found a singing male in a bush.

They have an odd angular appearance, as though roughly carved from wood.

That’s it for now. Soon I will share results of a productive winter project.

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One Last Look Back

December 14, 2017 at 7:29 am (birds, dragonflies and damselflies, singing insects)
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by Carl Strang

My recent blog posts have shared highlights of this year’s field season, as I searched for singing insects in the 22-county area I define as the Chicago region. Those accounts haven’t told the whole story, though, and I have a few last photos to shake out of the bag. These fill out some of the experience of doing this kind of regional study.

For instance, other animals have enhanced the delight.

The chalk-fronted corporal is a dragonfly I have encountered only in the northern portion of the region, in this case at the Lulu Lake Nature Preserve in northern Walworth County, Wisconsin.

Walsh’s grasshopper was a new one for me. Not a singing species, but an interesting find at the Poverty Prairie in DuPage County’s Waterfall Glen Forest Preserve.

Turkey vultures assemble at dusk on the Culver, Indiana, water tower. My travels take me back to my home town a few times each season.

Interesting and beautiful scenes are to be found in the relatively undisturbed wild areas which are my main destinations.

An early evening rainbow at Conrad Station in the Indiana Kankakee Sands presaged a thunderstorm-dodging drive home on July 2.

Pinholes between tree leaves cast solar eclipse shadows at Blackwell Forest Preserve. Though the moon covered around 90% of the sun at peak, I detected no change in singing insect activity.

One of the more beautiful scenes was this panne in the Indiana dunes.

I had hoped to find delicate meadow katydids in the pannes. Dusky-faced meadow katydids were a good find there, but that species has a solid hold in other dunes wetlands.

The Pembroke Savanna in the Illinois Kankakee Sands is one of my favorite sites.

I believe these white pines at Warren Dunes State Park in Berrien County, Michigan, are the same ones where Richard Alexander found treetop bush katydids in 1971. He described the trees as small, but all are tall now. They still foster pine tree crickets, but I did not find any bush katydids.

I ended up with 115 county records for the season, totaling all newly found singing insect species over all the counties.

So far, I have found sprinkled grasshoppers only in oak savannas on sand soils.

Dusky-faced meadow katydids at the Indiana Kankakee Sands were a Newton County record.

This curve-tailed bush katydid at the Jasper-Pulaski Fish and Wildlife Area in Indiana provided a Jasper County record for my study.

I found a healthy population of long-tailed meadow katydids, including this brown-legged male, at Ferson Creek Fen in Kane County.

The Ferson Creek population also had green-legged variants, including this female.

Lisa Rainsong, Wendy Partridge and I drove south to Loda Prairie to check out the bush cicadas there. I concluded this year that the species does not occur in the Chicago region.

This Texas bush katydid was singing in early October at Springbrook Prairie Forest Preserve, DuPage County. I had an observation of this species on October 17, my latest ever in the region.

Most of the long winter remains, and as I compile data, write reports, and visit museums, I will be looking forward to another collection of rich experiences as I resume my field study in 2018.

 

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Illinois’ Kankakee Sands

September 1, 2015 at 6:18 am (Uncategorized)
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by Carl Strang

In the Chicago region when someone mentions the Kankakee Sands, usually they are referring to the Nature Conservancy project in Newton County, Indiana. There is, however, a nature preserve in southeastern Kankakee County, Illinois, also known as “Kankakee Sands,” which also is worth knowing about.

The preserve has very high quality oak savanna and prairie ecosystems.

The preserve has very high quality oak savanna and prairie ecosystems.

I paid my first visit to this site on Friday, and left with a good dozen singing insect county records.

Most species were sand-soil singers I had encountered before, but this was my first sprinkled grasshopper.

Most species were sand-soil singers I had encountered before, but this was my first sprinkled grasshopper.

He was buried in a grass clump, offering no chance of a good photo. Fortunately he was open to climbing onto my finger for a portrait. The all-black pronotum sides are unique.

The most common orthopterans were tinkling ground crickets and straight-lanced meadow katydids, unsurprising on this sand soil.

One of the many male straight-lanceds from Friday.

One of the many male straight-lanceds from Friday.

I was pleased also to find that my new friend the handsome grasshopper is common there.

Handsome grasshopper, male.

Handsome grasshopper, male.

Female handsome grasshoppers were a bit bigger and green rather than brown.

Female handsome grasshoppers were a bit bigger and green rather than brown.

Both mottled sand grasshoppers and Boll’s grasshoppers also were there, the former often punctuating the scenery with their bright yellow hind wings in flight.

Boll’s grasshopper also has yellow hind wings. These are concealed when both species are at rest.

Boll’s grasshopper also has yellow hind wings. These are concealed when both species are at rest.

There also were plenty of bush katydids.

Most were curve-tailed bush katydids.

Most were curve-tailed bush katydids.

One, slightly smaller, proved to be a male fork-tailed bush katydid.

One, slightly smaller, proved to be a male fork-tailed bush katydid.

Kankakee Sands are worth a visit on either side of the state line.

 

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Hypothetical Cicadas and Grasshoppers

April 10, 2013 at 5:58 am (singing insects)
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by Carl Strang

Thanks to two publications, one very new and one very old, I have been able to fill out my list of singing insects that may occur in the Chicago region by adding possible cicada and grasshopper species. The new reference is a monograph published last year by the Entomological Society of America, The Cicadas (Hemiptera: Cicadoidea: Cicadidae) of North America North of Mexico, by Allen F. Sanborn and Maxine S. Heath. There is not a lot of natural history information in it, as its focus is on sorting out species and their relationships, but it is complete in its species coverage and at least outlines the range for each. It allowed me to add three possible cicadas to my list. Two of them are tallgrass prairie specialists that are known in Illinois but may not occur this far north: the common grass cicada (Cicadetta calliope), a tiny early season species, and the bush cicada (Tibicen dorsatus), a late season species. The third added cicada, Walker’s cicada (Tibicen pronotalis), is a large insect of woodlands along streams.

The old reference is W.S. Blatchley’s Orthoptera of Northeastern America with Especial Reference to the Faunas, of Indiana and Florida. This one was published back in 1920, and is available as a 2012 reprint by the Forgotten Books company. The text is generally readable, but somewhat faint. The taxonomy and nomenclature for the grasshoppers have been remarkably stable over time, and most scientific names haven’t changed. I was able to make the necessary updates by referring to the most recent popular guide to grasshoppers, katydids and crickets by Capinera, Scott, and Walker. Blatchley’s book contains considerable natural history information, and is reminiscent of the Bent’s Life Histories of Birds in its style.

There are two subfamilies of singing grasshoppers. The stridulating slantfaced grasshoppers, subfamily Gomphocerinae, sing while perched or resting on the ground, lifting and lowering their back legs to rub them against the wings, producing a rapid zuzz-zuzz-zuzz sound that is distinct from other insect songs, but to my ear this stridulation seems much the same in different species. The only one for which I have a photograph is a northern species.

Thomas’s broad-winged grasshopper at Whitefish Point on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

Thomas’s broad-winged grasshopper at Whitefish Point on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

That grasshopper does not occur as far south as our area, but another member of its genus, the sprinkled broad-winged grasshopper (Chloealtis conspersa) is one I’ll listen for, along with 7 other candidates in this subfamily. Though their songs probably are much the same, their habitats and details of their appearance are different.

The other singing subfamily of grasshoppers is Oedipodinae, the band-winged grasshoppers. These produce their sounds in a different way, crepitation, by rattling or rubbing together their wings in flight. The potential additions to the local list number a dozen species. One of these also was prominent at Whitefish Point.

A pair of clear-winged grasshoppers, Camnula pellucida

A pair of clear-winged grasshoppers, Camnula pellucida

The literature suggests more variation in the sounds produced by the crepitation method, but these grasshoppers are flying when they sing, and so should be easier to locate.

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