Reading next to a picture window last evening, I was startled several times by a thud against the glass. In each case, a large katydid, attracted by the lamp, had jumped to the window from an adjacent shrub or tree.
Commonly known as bush crickets or long-horned grasshoppers, this diverse family of insects (numbering some 6500 species worldwide) is represented by more than 200 species in North America. More closely related to crickets than grasshoppers, most are medium to large sized orthopterans and, in most species, the female is significantly larger than the male. Most are green in color, blending with the vegetation on which they feed; remaining inactive for much of the day, their loud, scratchy fiddling begins at dusk and they spend the night feasting on leaves and flowers (some species also consume small insects). Katydids move about by jumping and climbing and are best observed on window panes or on vegetation lit by outdoor floodlights.
Female katydids lay their eggs directly on leaves or within the soil. Adults and juveniles succumb to the first hard freeze while the eggs overwinter in soil or leaf litter; those not consumed by birds, mice or shrews hatch into nymphs the following spring. Following several molts throughout the spring and summer, juveniles that avoid predation by birds, snakes, mantids and toads reach adult size by August; it is then that their annual season of fiddling and mating begins, peaking in September and dying out as autumn chill sweeps across the Heartland.
