A decline in the cricket population?

[philemer]

One reason I love the summers is because I like to fall asleep listening to the sound of crickets. It reminds of wonderful trips to the country as a child. But this year we haven't heard ANY crickets! Have you noticed a decline in your neck of the woods? We also have very few wasps/yellow jackets this summer. What's up? Is this related to the decrease in the number of honey bees?

 

[cathyv]

I live in Oklahoma and we have an abundance of crickets. This week the temp got to near 100 and they are chirping away. I think they chirp more the warmer it is. Hope you get some soon.

 

[Denise L]

We have a lot of crickets !

Everyone else in our neighborhood sprays for bugs, but we don't, so they all live in our backyard with all the zillions of ants and spiders and lizards....

No complaints here, we love the sound of crickets, too!

 

[ricoba]

I live in metro Los Angeles, and I can hear crickets right now, outside the window.

The thing I miss this year is the hummingbirds. I put my feeder out and saw one or two, but they haven't come around too much this year.

 

[Karen G]

Just got back from an hour-long walk and I heard crickets all the way.

 

[David]

I think they chirp more the warmer it is.

In general this is true for the snow tree cricket. The number of chirps per minute, C, is related to the temperature T in degrees Fahrenheit, by the formula

C = 4T - 160.

Of course, there are problems if you put a snow cricket in an oven at 400 degrees, or plunge them into an ice bath!

 

[ctreelmom]

Crickets seem normal in CT, but boy do we have a lot of beetles this year! They are everywhere and while I love to line-dry my laundry, they are making it a challenge.

 

[philemer]

I live in Oklahoma and we have an abundance of crickets. This week the temp got to near 100 and they are chirping away. I think they chirp more the warmer it is. Hope you get some soon.

It's been over a 100 deg. a number of days already and no crickets. I only use granular fertilizer and I spot spray for weeds. I don't spray for insects/bugs. Same pattern as the last 13 years. It's a mystery to me.

 

[Kona Lovers]

We don't have many crickets anyway, but we're usually inundated with wasps, and we've only seen one this year. We've fished more bees out of our pool this year than normal. Go figure.

Marty

 

[Banker]

funny that you mention crickets...for some reason we have some crickets inside our bank branch! I have seen about 4 or 5.....hopping around the carpet, right into my office, I chase them out and open our front door and out they hop....

 

[Jestjoan]

You are welcome to ALL the tree frogs in our woods........

When we went to a talk about hummingbirds, the speaker said to get the red/pink surveyor's tape and put it on the bushes. That was especially to attract hummers when they arrived back in the US. It might work now, I don't know. We got our tape at Lowe's or HD.

He said NO red dye in the food.

http://www.hummingbirdsplus.org/
The banding at Ft. Morgan is really fun to see.

 

[KCI]

We have a pond behind our house and the screeching of frogs drowns out the sounds of every critter for miles. We've also had a strange phenomena in our neighborhood this summer. Our next door neighbor has 13 piles of dirt in his rubber mulch that has been caused by bees. They are Cicada killer wasps and so far they have not been able to get rid of them. They are huges wasps about half the size of a hummingbird. I sure hope they are able to get rid of them and that they don't start spreading to other yards. Anyone ever heard of these wasps or have any idea of how to get rid of them.

 

[tashamen]

Maybe we're eating too many of them!

On our last night in Cancun last week my husband ordered crickets for dinner in a restaurant - I had some - crunchy but not much taste -

 

[Passepartout]

This from The Times News of Twin Falls, Idaho this week.....

COLUMN: Mormons on the march near Jarbidge
You don't say
By Steve Crump
Mormon crickets are 3 inches long … In swarms of a million - not uncommon in the Great Basin - they can literally blot out of the sun …

For most of the Magic Valley, the bugs (anabrus simplex, if you haven't been property introduced) are little more than a curiosity, the stuff of Mormon legend … But for some of our neighbors, they're a set-your-watch-by-it summertime plague …

Doug Maughan, the public affairs director at the College of Southern Idaho, witnessed just how much on a Sunday afternoon drive to Jarbidge, Nev. …

"On the road beyond Murphy Hot Springs, we started to see big crickets - first just a few, and eventually, to the point where it looked like the road was moving,' Maughan said … "Mormons on the march … Crickets, that is … It was almost eerie in some places …ATV riders were everywhere, helping do their part to crush the horde … The license plate on the back (of one ATV) proudly said 'Jarbidge Fire Department' … He had his dog on the back, pistol on his hip, and he was driving slowly with one hand as he sprinkled the contents of a coffee can along the side of the road …

"We pulled up alongside and he told us he was putting down cricket bait … 'They're dyin' fast,' he said calmly … Others we spoke with, equally as calm, said it's a battle they do every year at this time." …

Because it almost devastated the crops of Utah settlers in 1848, the Mormon cricket is often compared to the locust, an insect that has never really recovered from the bad press it earned in the book of Exodus … But locusts are just ordinary grasshoppers - "locust" is actually the term for the insect's swarming phase - looking for elbow room. … Mormon crickets, on the other hand, are flightless katydids with an appetite for other Mormon crickets; they swarm to avoid become lunch for the insects behind them, some entomologists believe