Katydids make Summer Nights Come Alive

Daily News-Record, July 2, 2022

By about the third week of July, summer nights are filled with the loud “songs” of katydids, one of our most common and universally known insects. Katydids are not often seen because they usually stay among the foliage of bushes and trees where their matching green color safeguards them from predators. But if you are observant, you just might spot a katydid in an unexpected spot. I’ve found them on my carport and porch ceilings, along the roofline of my house where the gutter is located, and even clinging to window screens during daylight hours.

You can probably find several species of katydids in your yard, and you can tell them apart by the shape of their bodies and the length of their antennae. If you take photographs or draw sketches of the various ones you see, you’ll then have an idea of how many different songs you might be able to distinguish on hot summer evenings because each species has its own distinctive sound. A katydid usually will stay put long enough for you to do this, so long as you don’t move suddenly and startle it.

If you do disturb an adult male katydid, it will probably not fly far away. Even though it has four wings, the katydid uses only the back two wings for flying, making its flight rather clumsy. An adult male katydid uses its front two wings as its “voice” because it does not have vocal chords with which to sing. It rubs the stiff edge (called the “scraper”) of one front wing over a ridge (called a “file”) on the underside of the other front wing. This is what we hear at night, starting in midsummer.

Many people think that the persistent throbbing, grating noises that are referred to as songs sound like “katydid … katydid …”, so that is how katydids got their name. It’s an American word used to describe an insect that in other areas of the world is called a bush cricket.

If you find a katydid, take advantage of this uncommon opportunity to get a close look. These insects are very tolerant of eyeball-to-eyeball inspection. You may be able to see its two “ears” (called tympana—TIM-pa-na), each located on a foreleg just below the “knee.” Each hearing organ consists of a thin, tense membrane (layer of material) overlying an air sac (part of a small tubing system that most insects use to breathe). This membrane vibrates when hit by sound waves. You can tell if a katydid is listening because it will lean from side to side and raise its uppermost foreleg to make the membrane accessible to the influence of air-molecule vibrations (sound).

More than a hundred kinds of katydids inhabit the United States and more than 5,000 exist worldwide. Scientists classify them as part of the group of long-horned grasshoppers. Indeed, the antennae of katydids are often longer than their bodies.

Their songs are synonymous with summer, and their sounds, more than any other, make nights come alive.

Marlene A. Condon is the author/photographer of The Nature-friendly Garden: Creating a Backyard Haven for Plants, Wildlife, and People (Stackpole Books; information at www.marlenecondon.com). You can read her blog at https://InDefenseofNature.blogspot.com