As the summer sun disappears over the horizon and the evening birdcalls wane in the approaching twilight, numerous new sounds appear to take their place. In the peacefulness of the summer night a myriad chorus serenades the darkness with a wide variety of musical proposals.

Many of these new sounds are not really new, but were merely “covered over” by the many overpowering daytime sounds.
To the human ear the various sounds tell a story even if not connected with a specific source. The annoying hum of mosquito wings provides for mild apprehension and we proceed accordingly. At the other end of the nighttime chorus a sound reaches us which strikes a note of pleasant melancholy and ties us to our rural roots. It is the song of the cricket.

The cricket is a rather interesting, non-disruptive, almost lovable little fellow which has been venerated for thousands of years as a “desirable” insect. Numerous sonnets and odes have been written to and about him. The saying that “A cricket on the hearth is good luck.” originated with people of European origin. In some parts of Africa crickets are believed to have magical powers of a different kind.

But what about our summer night songster?

Actually, the cricket is trying to impress only one fellow creature with his song – a prospective mate. Although very numerous, crickets of our area fall into four basic kinds. The mole cricket which lives underground, the camel cricket, a nighttime scavenger possessing a very distinctive “humped” back, the tree cricket which doesn’t “look like a cricket,” but is one of the loudest songsters, and the ever-familiar field cricket of hearth and yard. There are, of course, various species in each of the last two groups if you desire to be on a first-name basis with these serenaders, but it is totally unnecessary in order to appreciate their songs.

Of the crickets which we commonly hear, the males do all the calling, which can be heard by humans at a distance as far as 150 yards. The female cricket, however, fails to respond from a distance of more than 10 yards. Most field cricket males maintain territories near their burrows and will vigorously repel any interloping males. The females, on the other hand, are quite mobile and will respond to the loudest male in the vicinity (which, incidentally, will be the nearest male). A repertoire of three songs is used which begins with the spontaneous calling (what we generally hear) and proceeds to a “wooing song” when the female is close and mating is imminent. A third “song” is a short, defensive warning sound to other males.

The sound is produced by the rubbing of parts of one wing upon the other in a process called stridulation. One wing has a series of small protrusions or “teeth” forming a “file,” which is scraped by a thickened portion, the “scraper,” of the leading edge of the other wing. This is much like the rapid movement of your thumbnail along the teeth of a comb. As a sound is produced by each tooth of the “file,” the wing membranes vibrate between 10 to 20 times, which produces the familiar trilling character of the song. Interestingly enough, it appears that it is the rhythm or frequency modulation which causes the female to “recognize” her prospective mate rather than the song itself.

More interesting yet is that the most audible of the cricket songs, that of the tree cricket, cannot be heard by the female at all, but she is attracted to the male by the odor of a chemical which is produced during the song.

During some of the upcoming summer nights, sit back and wait for the pleasant “chirp” of the field cricket, or the piercing “treat, treat, treat” of the less-familiar tree cricket and take time to enjoy the night music.