Tree cricket chorus has begun

[Don Boucher]

We started hearing tree crickets in the evening. There's a difference between tree crickets and field crickets. Field crickets have been singing since mid spring, both during the day and in the early evening. They live in grassy, unmowed fields, prairies and oak savannas, but they’re uncommon in well groomed lawns. They look like what you’d expect a cricket to look like. They have stout and shiny, dark brown bodies with long rear legs for jumping. Tree crickets look very different from field crickets, even though they’re in the same family. Tree crickets have long, pale green bodies, long and thin legs, and large, clear wings. Attached is a photo of Riley's Tree Cricket from 2014. It was identified by sound, many species look very similar and you can't tell from the photo.

In the city and suburbs, most of us live in close proximity to trees and shrubby areas where tree crickets are common. But they're very common elsewhere in similar habitats. They’ve been around all spring and early summer but only started chirping now since they’ve grown large enough to chirp.

If you want to talk about crickets and the ambient temperature, we made a video about this several years ago: https://youtu.be/W27Rd6QyiwM

In principle, it's true that the ambient temperature determines the rate of cricket movements. Thus, a cricket’s chirping rate increases with the ambient temperature in a predictable way. But if you don't know what species you're listening to, the formula commonly available only works for the Snowy Tree Cricket and the Spring Field Cricket. There are many other common species you can hear.

-Don Boucher

NE Corvallis