MIdnight singer

I was treated to a serenade, brought by a cricket. (Well, maybe the serenade was aimed at someone else, but I enjoyed it.) I heard him chirping away under a bedroom dresser for two nights. Then, the third morning, I found him in the kitchen.

Fall field cricket, Gryllus pennsylvanicus, male, tired from his wanderings, content to be photographed.

He was so glossy black, but when I got down to his level, lying on the floor with him, I discovered that the underside of his rear legs was a reddish brown.

I collected him in a cup and took him outside.

Here he is beside a flower pot.

The triangles at the bottom of the pot are 3 cm wide at the base, which makes this guy about 2.5 cm. long, a good size for one of these crickets.

He's a male; females have a long ovipositor (egg-laying tube) between the two cerci (sensory spikes) at the rear.

And this I didn't know: crickets have the two large compound eyes, and three tiny ocelli, eyespots with a single lens, arranged in a triangle at the front of the face.

When I went to take a face view, he scuttled behind the pot. I couldn't find him again.

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Me trajeron serenata. Bueno, tal vez la serenata se dirigía a otros oídos, pero yo la disfruté. Era un grillo, cantando debajo de un gabinete en mi recámara por dos noches. En la mañana del tercer dia, lo encontré en la cocina.

Fotos: un grillo de campo de otoño macho, Grillus pennsylvanicus.

Era de un negro profundo, muy brillante, pero cuando me puse a su nivel, acostándome en el piso, descubrí que la parte inferior de sus patas posteriores era de un color café rojizo, color de una maceta de barro.

Lo capturé en una taza y lo llevé afuera. Con su foto al lado de una maceta, pude medirlo; los triángulos en la base de la maceta miden 3 cm. horizontalmente. El grillo, entonces, mide alrededor de 2,5 cm., que es un buen tamaño para esta especie de grillo.

Es macho: las hembras tienen un ovipositor, (órgano usado para depositar huevos) entre los dos cercos (como espinas largas) en la parte posterior del insecto.

Y no sabía esto: los grillos tienen los dos ojos compuestos, y además tres ocelos, ojos simples dispuestos en un triángulo.

Cuando me acomodé para sacarle una foto de la cara, el grillo corrió a esconderse tras la maceta, y ya no lo volví a encontrar.

Crawlers, jumpers, singers

And going back to the piles of "hold for later" photos: a collection of critters.

In a handful of wet mud: an earthworm and a pretty Spotted Snake millipede, Blaniulus guttulatus.

Cricket, female. The males sing all summer under my kitchen window. The cat brought this one in, freshly killed.

The two spikes at the rear are cerci, sensory organs. The long, split-ended one is her ovipositor, used to lay her eggs.

Weevil, playing dead, as they do. When the photo session ended, he wandered away.

Not a "hold". A small crane fly on my wall this week. Interesting pattern on the wings, similar to that of the hairy-eyed crane fly, but that's an eastern species. I'll send it in to BugGuide.

A tiny jumper.

And a tiny moth.