Two years ago, I had a frustrating hour trying to catch some band-winged grasshoppers with bright yellow hind wings at the Indiana Kankakee Sands Nature Conservancy site. They were agile, fast flyers, and eventually I had to give up because they were on to me and stopped flying. I vowed to try again, and this year on September 12 I returned for the showdown.
I wasn’t alone. When I got clearance from Preserve Coordinator Alyssa Nyberg, she asked to come along, and she brought in her husband, Gus, an IDNR Laborer, and three Newton County Student Conservation Interns. I brought extra nets. How could we fail?
It wasn’t easy. This time the grasshoppers were more variously colored, many with red or orange hind wings, along with the yellow ones. They were just as tricky, flying above our reach, flying fast, flying far. After many misses, a couple close calls, and much laughter, one of the interns chased down one of the grasshoppers and netted it.
Our team, except for Alyssa, who took the photo. I am holding the grasshopper for inspection.It proved to be an autumn yellow-winged grasshopper (Arphia xanthoptera). This was a site and county record, and only the second population I have found in northern Indiana.
I got a glimpse but no photo of another band-winged grasshopper species, which were displaying in numbers, but flying low within the tall grassy vegetation. These were clouded grasshoppers (Encoptolophus sordidus), historically known in Newton County.
Gus caught a meadow katydid female with an extra-long ovipositor.
I previously had found straight-lanced meadow katydids (Conocephalus strictus) at Kankakee Sands.
I shared some of my techniques with the others, and after they had gathered some sedge seeds and left, I did some slow searching. This resulted in a great find.
There was a good population of prairie meadow katydids (Conocephalus saltans).
This is only the second population of this species I have found in Indiana, and only the fifth in the Chicago region. They are limited to remnant prairies and savannas, and they persist thanks to preserves protected by governmental bodies like the IDNR and organizations like The Nature Conservancy.
Traveling south gives me the best chance to experience singing insects not found in the Chicago region. On August 18 I drove down to the southern tip of Illinois. I spent four days there, camping at Ferne Clyffe State Park and visiting other sites nearby.
One of my target species was the lichen grasshopper (Trimerotropis saxatilis), which has been photographed a few times at Ferne Clyffe.
The habitat is there, lichen covered rocky cliffs.The grasshoppers’ color blends with the greenish lichens.
Though I checked a lot of these rocky shelves, I couldn’t find one of the grasshoppers to photograph.
I also missed my other top priority species, the western cypress katydid (Inscudderia taxodii). It has been photographed at Heron Pond Nature Preserve, but I didn’t see any when I visited there one morning. I enjoyed the beautiful place, and listed the singing insects I found, but the highlight turned out to be something other than an insect.
This tiny critter is a bird-voiced treefrog (Hyla avivoca), a species of the southern swamps that barely makes it into southern Illinois.
Despite those disappointments, there were plenty of other singing insects to enjoy. Strips of dense tall herbaceous vegetation around the lake at Ferne Clyffe held a good population of agile meadow katydids (Orchelimum agile), my first in Illinois.
Though not an aquatic species, agile meadow katydids often turn up close to water.
There were two species of grasshoppers in the lake edge vegetation that are more typically water associated.
The clipped-wing grasshopper (Metaleptea brevicornis) is a singing species I have found in a few places in the Chicago region.The olive-green swamp grasshopper (Paroxya clavuliger) belongs to a non-singing subfamily.
One night I found that a lesser angle-wing katydid (Microcentrum retinerve) had been attracted to the lights of the campground shower building. I had heard this southern species singing many times, but this was the first one I had seen.
The brown area within the stridulatory field on the insect’s back separates this male from its close relative, the greater angle-wing (M. rhombifolium), which also was at Ferne Clyffe.
The final area I visited on this trip was Crab Orchard National Wildlife Refuge. It has diverse habitats, with a large recreational lake as its centerpiece.
I found a population of common meadow katydids (Orchelimum vulgare) in some upland vegetation near a pond.Though Richardson’s cicada (Neotibicen richardsonianus) and swamp cicadas (N. tibicen) were the common daytime species, many scissor-grinder cicadas (N. pruinosa) like this dead one sang in the late afternoon and at dusk.
One of the highlights of the trip was my first encounter with the largest band-winged grasshopper I have ever seen.
This beautifully marked insect is a wrinkled grasshopper (Hippiscus ocelote). Historically it was known in the Chicago region, but as far as I can tell it no longer occurs there.The back is likewise elegantly and distinctly marked.
There is unfinished business for me in this area, as two of my sound recordings seem best to fit two species of crickets I have yet to meet. One I made in the campground may have been a Columbian trig (Cyrtoxipha columbiana) widely distributed across southern Illinois and Indiana according to iNaturalist reports. My recording resembles references for the species (with a phonobomb from a lesser angle-wing):
The other interesting recording came from a species common in the Round Bluff Nature Preserve (phonobombed by Richardson’s cicada):
Its song resembled that of Say’s trig (Anaxipha exigua) but had sharper pulses, and I heard Say’s there also, providing a clear contrast. The song also reminded me of Allard’s ground cricket (Allonemobius allardi). This was a rocky forest habitat, however, unlike the open grassy places allardi likes. Also, the songs were continuous, lacking the frequent pauses Allard’s insert in their songs. I think these may prove to be Thomas’s trigs (Anaxipha thomasi). The song parameters are a perfect fit for that species, but thomasi, which was first described in 2014, has not been established this far west. Another trip in a future season is in order.
For many years I have participated in the series of annual bioblitzes sponsored by the Indiana Academy of Science. The 2016 event took place at Goose Pond State Fish and Wildlife Area in mid-June. Goose Pond is in southern Indiana, but that is an early date for singing insects even that far south, and I found only 8 species. This year I went back on August 4 and 5 and got much better results, finding 34 species, though rain slowed me down the first day.
I found green-striped grasshoppers (Chortophaga viridifasciata) in June, but in southern Indiana this species is bivoltine. The second generation is different, being much more variously and strikingly colored.
Here is one example. June males are a more uniform shade of brown than this.
Handsome grasshoppers (Syrbula admirabilis) were one of the new species.
I have found handsome grasshoppers in both southern and northern Indiana.
On the rainy first afternoon I photographed a large cricket nymph.
The head markings identify it as a Japanese burrowing cricket (Velarifictorus micado). My first experience with this species was at another bioblitz in northern Indiana.
One species I am especially interested in finding is the agile meadow katydid (Orchelimum agile). I suspect this species will prove to be widespread and common in southern Indiana and possibly southern Illinois. Goose Pond proved to be another location for them.
White eyes are a characteristic of this species.The male agile meadow katydid has distinctive, relatively simple cerci.
One of my personal goals for these extended trips is to meet new species of singing insects that I have not found in the Chicago region. One such turned up at night in a meadow habitat.
The unmarked, oval rather than round structure at the tip of the head is suggestive of the false robust conehead (Neoconocephalus bivocatus).
Their songs were plenty loud if you were close, but not nearly as loud at a distance as those of their sibling species, the robust conehead (N. robustus). A recording of the song reveals the characteristic that gives this katydid its species name.
Pulses in the sonogram are doubled. They would be evenly spaced singles in robustus.
It sounded like this:
Cicadas provided other highlights. I heard a Walker’s cicada (Megatibicen pronotalis) singing in a small cottonwood and, at the price of a wet foot, got photos.
Perhaps the damaged left eye is one reason I was able to get close.
Here’s what he sounded like:
Even more welcome was a different cicada song that I had never heard before:
This was my first encounter with Robinson’s cicada (Neotibicen robinsonianus), a southern species which occasionally has been observed in northern Indiana and Illinois. (Full disclosure: this recording, clearer than the one I got at Goose Pond, I made on a later trip to be covered in the next post.)
A few weeks had passed since my first visits to Gleason Nature Preserve in Illinois and Spring Creek Nature Preserve in Wisconsin. That was enough time for some turnover in species of singing insects to have occurred. I went back to Gleason on July 21. Right away it was clear that the orange-winged grasshoppers that had been so prominent on June 16 were gone. As I explored the prairie, though, I began to find species, both familiar and unfamiliar, that had not been out earlier.
Early on, I flushed out some small grasshoppers with pale antennas. These proved to be white-whiskered grasshoppers, Ageneotettix deorum, which I had found only at Illinois Beach State Park in the Chicago region.
A Gleason Nature Preserve white-whiskered grasshopper
Another sand-soil species I recognized from the Chicago region was the longhorn band-winged grasshopper, Psinidia fenestralis.
This species is well camouflaged against the sand.
A bush katydid flew up.
The proportions pointed to broad-winged bush katydid, Scudderia pistillata, widely distributed in the Chicago region.
I had driven through rain to reach the preserve, but as the morning passed so did the clouds. A cicada sang loudly from a bush in the sunshine.
It proved to be a bush cicada, Megatibicen dorsatus, which I previously had found just south of the Chicago region at Loda Cemetery Prairie.
The highlight of this second Gleason trip was a slant-faced grasshopper I had not seen before.
This is Mermiria bivittata, the twostriped slantfaced grasshopper.These grasshoppers have an unusual spread in their hind legs.That odd posture shows well in this face-on view.
A week later, I returned to Wisconsin’s Spring Green preserve. Right away I began to see a newly familiar species.
The twostriped Mermiria were abundant at Spring Green.
Also prominent there were abundant large grasshoppers of a non-singing species.
These were spotted bird grasshoppers, Schistocerca lineata.
The bird grasshoppers draw the eye, being large, graceful fliers.
Another common species at Spring Green was the mottled sand grasshopper, Spharagemon collare, one of the band-winged grasshoppers. These produce crackling flight displays and so are regarded as singing insects.
Most of the mottled sand grasshoppers were typically dark and mottled in color, but a few were paler, like this one.
Though I may not return to these preserves this year, I expect to check them again in other parts of the season.
I first encountered spring trigs (Anaxipha vernalis) at the Connor Prairie bioblitz, just north of Indianapolis, in 2013. At the time, the species had not been formally described, but it was listed in the Singing Insects of North America website as “Anaxipha species G, spring trig.” Walker and Funk published the formal description and name of the species in 2014. In subsequent years I found these tiny crickets to be abundant and widespread from Indianapolis south in Indiana. In the southern part of the Chicago region I was able to find only widely scattered, tiny populations in Indiana’s Jasper and Fulton Counties. Between there and Indianapolis, in Howard County (Kokomo area) the populations were larger and somewhat more numerous, but still widely scattered.
Spring trig
Now that I am expanding beyond the Chicago region, one of my goals was to assess spring trig populations in Illinois. There were a few iNaturalist records in the Peoria area, but no indication of abundance. On June 16 I headed south toward Peoria, following the east side of the Illinois River. My first stop was a roadside picnic area a few miles south of Lacon. It resembled places where I had found the northernmost Indiana populations.
There was a strip of tall grass against the edge of a woodland.
I heard a few spring trigs singing in part of the grassy strip. They resembled the northernmost Indiana populations, and at the same latitude. I continued south and found a larger but isolated population beside the entrance road to the Woodford County Conservation Area.
Tall grasses were in an open wet area, much like the more southern Indiana sites where spring trigs are abundant.
I recorded one of the singers:
With 45 pulses per second at a frequency of 5.65 kilohertz, this song fits nicely with other spring trig recordings I have made.
Eventually I made my way to the Peoria area, and I found spring trigs to be abundant and widespread in McNaughton Park, near Pekin. This was around the latitude of Howard County, and so it seemed the Illinois population gradient of spring trigs might be slightly north of Indiana’s.
That prompted me to take a day trip to Indiana and see if the trigs have advanced north since I last checked. I found a tiny group in the north part of Willow Slough Fish & Wildlife Area. That provided a Newton County record but was at the same latitude as the northernmost spring trigs I had found in Fulton County. I have to conclude that spring trigs are showing a similar latitudinal pattern across the two states.
On June 16 I headed down to the Peoria area. I had two goals in mind, one of which I will get into in a later post. The other was to visit a place in the Sand Ridge State Forest, south of Peoria, where velvet-striped grasshoppers (Eritettix simplex), a stridulating species, had been reported. I almost passed on that part of the trip, as that grasshopper had been observed in May, but not in June in recent years. I ended up being very grateful that I continued with the original plan.
The sign at the entrance labeled the site as the H.A. Gleason Nature Preserve. The little parking lot was in a bit of woods, but as I got out of the car, I heard loud rattling crepitations coming, not from the preserve, but from the roadside beside the entrance. I walked out there and saw bright red flashes from several flying band-winged grasshoppers, with a couple yellow ones mixed in.
The red ones were relatively large, and of course when perched and still they were well camouflaged.
I got out my net and caught one.
Beautiful green highlights figured prominently among the grays and browns.When I saw that the inner surfaces of the hind femurs were bright blue, I knew what these had to be.Orange-winged grasshoppers (Pardalophora phoenicoptera) were on my list of new species to meet, but I had not anticipated that they would be here.
I went on into the preserve. Orange-winged grasshoppers were in the sand prairie, too, but at a lower density than the roadside.
Gleason Nature Preserve has extensive areas of sand prairie.
Eventually I was able to get a photograph, diagnostic if less than sharp, of one of the yellow-winged grasshoppers.
It was a species familiar from my explorations in the Chicago region, the mottled sand grasshopper, Spharagemon collare.
When I arrived, cicadas were singing from the treetops around the edge of the prairie. Their songs were unfamiliar. They had the short duration of dog day cicada (Neotibicen canicularis) calling songs, but instead of the loud pure tone of canicularis, they were weak, lower in volume, irregular and buzzy. I waited too long, and they were done singing by the time I was ready to record. Back home, I was able to identify them by comparing my memory to reference recordings. This was my first encounter with hieroglyphic cicadas (Neocicada hieroglyphica). I had not expected them, either, but a check of iNaturalist showed a location elsewhere in that state forest for the species.
This is another site that I will want to visit at other times throughout the season.
Last year I began extending my singing insects explorations beyond the 22-county Chicago region. My first trip this year was on June 6, to the Spring Green Preserve State Natural Area, west of Madison in Sauk County, Wisconsin. My target was the coral-winged grasshopper, Pardalophora apiculata, which historically was known in the Chicago region but apparently no longer occurs there. Some iNaturalist records recently placed this early season species at Spring Green.
The preserve immediately proved it was worth the 3-hour drive, a visually beautiful sand prairie and forested ridge.
The extensive prairie has diverse native vegetation with bare sand between the plants, a habitat many uncommon singing grasshoppers prefer.Especially eye-catching were large-flowered beard tongues, Penstemon grandiflora.The trail passes through the prairie, then climbs the forested ridge, ending at an impressive overlook.
The forest contained abundant green-legged grasshoppers.
I consider Melanoplus viridipes, a non-singing species, to be an indicator of high-quality woodlands.
The only downside was that I wasn’t seeing any coral-winged grasshoppers in the prairie. There were plenty of singing spring field crickets (Gryllus veletis), and as the sun warmed the ground there were increasing numbers of displaying green-striped grasshoppers (Chortophaga viridifasciata), but my target species did not appear to be present this day.
I noticed, though, that some of the little displaying grasshoppers seemed different from typical green-striped males. Instead of the whispery buzz of the green-stripeds’ crepitations, these little oddballs had a louder, more crackling flight sound, and their hind wings were a brighter yellow. I thought I should get some documentation of these variants, and photographed one through some trailside vegetation.
It was very dark, with contrasting bands on the hind femurs and a pale line where the forewings join when the grasshopper is perched.
In retrospect, I should have read through my notes on species I had not yet encountered. I did not do so until I was back home. These in fact were speckled rangeland grasshoppers, Arphia conspersa, and they were on the list of species I wanted to meet. I hadn’t expected to find them in southern Wisconsin. Entomologists think taxonomically, and my references had emphasized differences between conspersa and other members of its genus, which are larger. In the field, though, the speckled rangeland grasshopper gives an impression of similarity to the same-sized green-striped grasshopper.
Lesson learned. Next year I will go there earlier in the season, hoping to find coral-winged grasshoppers and intending to get better photos of these little Arphias.
Back in 2008, during a vacation trip to southeastern Ohio, I had the pleasure of eating pawpaw fruits, which had just ripened. On a whim, I brought back three seeds and planted them in my woodland garden. Though they are native in my northeast Illinois county, I had no expectation that the seeds would do anything. Jump ahead to 2024:
They now are tall enough to be even with my second-floor bedroom window.
They have been flowering for the past two or three years, but my understanding was that their pollination requirements are so stringent that this isolated little colony could never produce fruit. The plants proved me wrong, as I noticed this summer that one of them was developing three fruits on its lower branches. I waited almost too long, as I found the fruits had fallen to the ground when I checked on them in mid-September. One was gone, probably having fed a squirrel. The other two were intact.
They were normal fruits, with seeds I have given to a friend who will attempt to grow them.
It seems that ants or some other local insects are capable of pollinating pawpaw flowers. The fruits were delicious, and I hope for more in coming years.
The agile meadow katydid (Orchelimum agile) was on the list of species that I hoped to find in southern Indiana. I photographed and recorded one in Indianapolis a few years ago, but it has not been well observed in Indiana or Illinois. I did not find them in my September visits to three central Indiana state parks. At the beginning of October, at Hovey Lake Fish & Wildlife Area in the southwestern tip of that state, I heard an Orchelimum male, singing in coarse herbaceous plants, that I thought might be this species.
Rapid jumbles of ticks alternated with short, equal-length buzzes.
I photographed the male.
The dark head with red eyes and green abdomen tip indicated that this could be a common meadow katydid (Orchelimum vulgare).The cerci (abdominal appendages) had bulbous ends beyond thick-based teeth, characteristic of vulgare.
Later, I found a marsh bordered by a levee with weedier vegetation. There I found another population of Orchelimum meadow katydids which proved to be agile.
The males’ higher-pitched songs had longer and more variable-length buzzes.This male has the characteristic pale head and eye, and yellow abdomen tip, of the agile meadow katydid.Agile cerci have narrower tips and teeth than in vulgare.Female agile meadow katydids show similar characteristics.
I hope in future explorations to get a better idea of the abundance and distribution of this species in Indiana and Illinois.
Having completed my main goals in the Chicago region singing insects study this year, I turned my attention farther south. I wanted to gain experience with species I hadn’t yet encountered, some of which may spread north as climate change continues. In mid-September I went on a 3-day camping trip to state parks in central Indiana, and at the beginning of October I traveled to the extreme southern toe of that state for 2 days.
Almost all the singing insects I encountered were familiar to me. The only exception in central Indiana was the lesser angle-wing (Microcentrum retinerve), a night-singing forest katydid. They proved to be common both at Summit Lake State Park, northeast of Indianapolis, and at Harmonie State Park, close to the confluence of the Wabash and Ohio Rivers, in the toe of Indiana.
Another new finding was variation in the singing and coloration of one of our most abundant species, the short-winged meadow katydid (Conocephalus brevipennis). In the Chicago region, their songs consist of brief buzzes alternating with sets of 1-3 ticks, with a metronomic precision in their spacing. Commonly in both central and southern Indiana, I found males with both longer buzzes and longer strings of ticks between the buzzes in their calling songs.
This long-winged variant at Summit Lake was one of the males with the different song form, but there were plenty of other examples with the typical short wings.Harmonie State Park is almost completely forested. An isolated population of short-winged meadow katydids around a pond there sported yellow heads, rather than the usual green.
The spotted ground cricket (Allonemobius maculatus) frequently occurs in Chicago region forests, but it was by far the most abundant species at Harmonie State Park and nearby upland forested sites.
Spotted ground cricket at Hovey Lake Fish & Wildlife Area
Hovey Lake proved to be an excellent site for singing insects, thanks to its diverse habitats. Here are two other species I found there:
Nature Inquiries 
