Maggie's Farm

We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

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Friday, September 10. 2021

Bug of the Week: Crickets chirping

The chorus of crickets chirping on these late summer evenings is one of the finest things in life, and last night they were loud. That evening bug-song has followed me through most of my life, and fills me with joy.


Field Crickets are found across the US. In New England, we have the Black Field Cricket (photo) who is at his prime in early October until the first hard frost. They are mainly nocturnal insects and eat almost anything.


Taxonomically, crickets (along with grasshoppers, locusts, katydids) are in Order Orthoptera of Class Insecta.


The males rub their forewings together producing the chirp or trill, of which the frequency is temperature-related. The function of the trill is, of course, to attract females desirous of fertilization - or to fight. Only males chirp.


Around here, we still have the Katydids singing at night along with the rapidly-growing Field Crickets. Open the windows. Or open the doors: two Field Crickets are occupying the Maggie's HQ right now, and I need to leave them some crumbs from my Subway sandwich to keep them happy.

Posted by Bird Dog in Natural History and Conservation at 17:15 | Comments (22) | Trackback (1)

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Thoughts On A Sunday
This was another half-and-half weekend here in the Lakes Region of New Hampshire - warm and partly sunny on Saturday; warmish, wet, and mostly cloudy on Sunday. It started pouring around 4AM Sunday which necessitated closing two of the...
Weblog: Weekend Pundit
Tracked: Sep 22, 20:13

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Ohhhhhhhh, I'm deadly afraid of these insects!!! You know, we don't have much of them, but when I travel somewhere, expecially to the sea, I see a lot of them and cannot go out!!! They are so big and nasty!!! uf ;)
#1 Irina (Link) on 2006-10-19 01:48 (Reply)
From the last link (Crickets and Temperature): “some grasshoppers tap their feet against a substrate to make noises”

“I’m not gay, I’m a grasshopper,” Craig chirped to the world.
#2 char on 2007-09-02 12:31 (Reply)
I always tap on the john. Usually to a Mozart piece in my head. From now on, I am going to adopt the "It can wait" strategery. I never heard about glory holes until today, and I am now like totally creeped out. Is that homophobic?
#2.1 The B. on 2007-09-02 12:59 (Reply)
No, it’s just normal and nice you don’t have a homophocus. Funny about the rest.
#2.1.1 Dr. char on 2007-09-02 13:17 (Reply)
One must make time for the classical movements!
#2.1.2 buddy larsen on 2007-09-02 18:57 (Reply)
indeedydoo!
#2.1.2.1 Richard Cohn on 2021-09-10 20:53 (Reply)
Parnassius apollo democratus butterfly.

RUSSIAN INSECTS T-SHIRTS

We introduce the first t-shirt of the series Russian Insects t-shirts.
The first one is white t-shirt with Parnassius apollo democratus image on the back.
This is 100% cotton. Sizes from M to XXL are available.

http://rusinsects.com/t-shirt_p-apollo.htm
#3 Alexei Smirnov on 2007-09-02 14:23 (Reply)
Last night Mrs. Puller and i had a few friends over for some burgers,beer, and just good old fun.
They guys jawed about the Mich defeat and heaven knows what the girls were talking about.
As is the case most of the time Larry started up about insects in his garden. Soon the conversation turned to insects in general. I swear I've never seen a group get so talky.
The prize talk was about the dung beetle. And why talk about the dung beetle unless you're talking about the:

GIANT DUNG BEETLE, Heliocopris andersoni, Order Coleoptera

Heliocopris andersoni is distributed from the warmer drier parts of southern Africa north-eastwards to East Africa. It is primarily associated with the coarse-fibred dung of large non-ruminant, herbivorous mammals. For breeding purposes, it buries a large amount of dung thus removing it from access to competitors. This dung mass is converted into several large, spherical brood balls in a subterranean chamber. Each brood ball contains a single egg and is coated in a clay shell. The parent beetles abandon the chamber soon after the eggs have hatched. The larvae feed on the dung, hollowing out the inside of the brood ball as they grow in size. When development is complete, they pupate and emerge as new adults in response to heavy rainfall. It is unclear whether they overwinter as immatures (third instar larvae) or as adults in southern Africa.

Heliocopris andersoni may measure up to 57 mm in length and 33 mm in width. The wingspan may exceed 135 mm, and the brood balls in which the larvae develop may measure up to 103 mm in diameter.

We finished off the case of Moosehead Lager and called it a good night.
#4 Herb Puller on 2007-09-02 14:34 (Reply)
It is not often that I see Americans talk about the Order Coleoptera but it is good.

There are many sub orders, my favorites are the Gyrinidae Latreille, (whirligig beetles) and the Leptinotarsa decemlineata, better knwon as the Colorado Potato Beetle.

I thank Maggies Fame Commune for featuring the Order Coleoptera.

Vashe Zdarovye !
Yezof
#5 Dr. Yezof Nakmonov on 2007-09-02 15:46 (Reply)
C'mon, someone say "Jiminy". I dare ya.
#6 Disney Legal Dep't on 2007-09-02 19:00 (Reply)
Dung beetles are cool.
#7 BD on 2007-09-02 19:03 (Reply)
Ginger cat wide awake now on the window sill of her boy's bedroom, head cocked, hypnotized by the sound of the crickets outside...

She usually hunts them and eats them. But not reliably. Last week, daughter was infuriated by persistent cricket in the room keeping her awake. Tossed the cat in, who had eaten too well (stealing off the hot barbecue grill) and wasn't interested in police work that night.

A more gruesome, but fascinating bug is the cicada killing wasp http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/in573
#8 retriever on 2007-09-02 23:50 (Reply)
Just googled this other site on cicada killers, with a cool shot of a female wasp carrying a paralyzed cicada. Click on the picture in the link to enlarge it. hope you can copy and paste this address... http://ww2.lafayette.edu/~hollidac/cicadakillerhome.html
#9 retriever on 2007-09-02 23:54 (Reply)
My hearing in one ear is very poor in certain frequency ranges due to firing weapons. I don't find the crickets so appealing but I can use my minor disability to lay my good ear into the pillow and not hear the crickets in my bad ear. Now the tinnitus in the bad ear is a whole other story.
#10 GoneWithTheWind on 2012-08-22 20:30 (Reply)
Crickets in our home from time to time. If I find one in the kitchen sink, I send it down the drain. If I find a spider in the sink, I get it to crawl up a paper towel and send it on its merry way outside. Figure the spider may catch a cricket in due time.
Funny comment from Disney Legal Dep't!
#11 JIm on 2013-09-21 22:50 (Reply)
One of my finest boyhood memories was the crickets that created a din every evening when I was at summer camp in the Alabama mountains. Now I enjoy listening to them on our back porch while having a drink with Mrs. Mudbug. Summer would not be the same without them.
#12 mudbug on 2013-09-21 23:40 (Reply)
Dang, I always thought of crickets as cockroaches' country cousins. (unintentional alliteration there). I figure crickets weren't hated and squashed like roaches because Jiminy got inside our heads when we were kids and it was all "oh look at the cute little cricket, I wonder where his little top hat is"
#13 bill on 2013-09-22 01:18 (Reply)
As somebody who knows cockroaches (grew up in New Orleans), I'm here to tell you that any relationship crickets might have to cockroaches is not even superficial. You may not appreciate the song of a woods full of chirping crickets but some people do. I am quite sure there is no feature about a cockroach that ANYBODY enjoys!
#13.1 mudbug on 2013-09-22 12:28 (Reply)
I first visited New Orleans in 1964. It seemed like a relatively safe place to walk around in back then especially during the day. I have been back numerous times but it is very low on my list of places I want to go. Anymore New Orleans scares me especially before Katrina. Has it gotten better since Katrina?
#14 GoneWithTheWind on 2013-09-22 14:05 (Reply)
Gone,

I've only been back once since Katrina and I didn't go to any of the hardest hit places so I can't say for sure.

I suspect that it is better if only marginally so. There is a huge increase in charter schools (and a corresponding decrease in traditional public schools). I am hopeful that a lot of the riff-raff left town after Katrina, but I have no facts. I also suspect that the city government is less corrupt since they got Nagin out. Certainly the state government is better as evidenced by Jindal being elected governor twice.

I moved out in 1986 and don't think I'd go back to live but I do wish I could visit more often - and I hope to in the future.
#14.1 mudbug on 2013-09-22 14:38 (Reply)
If they are good enough for Buddy Holly they are good enough for me.
#15 chasmatic (Link) on 2013-09-22 20:08 (Reply)
That evening bug-song has followed me through most of my life, and fills me with joy.

the animal went extinct during the Miocene. You are being haunted by the soulless undead, meaning libtards. those are their tortured cries.
#16 Donny "The Bear Jew" Donowitz on 2015-09-08 00:18 (Reply)

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