Does she or doesn't she?

 Another visitor came to my light.

Field cricket, Gryllus spp., female.

Males have two cerci (my guide says "pointy things") at the back of the abdomen. Females, besides, have an ovipositor, the egg-laying organ.

Head view. Interesting "grabbers" at the mouth.

I tried to capture her to put her outside, but she was too fast for me and hid behind a cabinet. Shortly afterwards, another cricket started to chirp just outside the window and kept it up off and on all night. Males chirp, females don't. I hope she went out to join him.

Do crickets fly? Or did she have to climb up the wall to find her mate? Looking at the photos, I see her tiny wing covers; are there full-sized wings underneath, all folded up?

Some species of field crickets have fully-formed wings and do fly. Others, also among the field crickets, are flightless. Which is she?

I found a photo with those stubby wing covers, but this cricket, Gryllus campestris, was in Czechoslovakia. I couldn't find any near here. E-Fauna, here in BC, has another field cricket, G. pennsylvanicus, but this one has full-sized wings. And a much longer ovipositor.

Maybe I'll see her again. And I'll ask her; "can you fly?"

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Llegó otra visita atraída por mi lámpara de noche.

Fotos: Un grillo hembra, Gryllus spp.

Los machos tienen dos cercos (apéndices largos en la extremidad del abdomen). Las hembras, además, tienen un ovipositor, un órgano usado para depositar los huevos.

Traté de capturarla para sacarla afuera, pero se escondió rapidamente tras un gabinete. Poco después, un grillo empezó a cantar afuera de la ventana, y siguió esporádicamente toda la noche. Los machos cantan, las hembras no. Ojalá mi visitante se haya ida a acompañar al cantante.

¿Vuelan los grillos? ¿O tuvo que subir la pared en pie para buscar su pareja? Mirando las fotos, vio los cobertores de sus alas, muy pequeñas; ¿tendrá debajo de ellos alas completas todas dobladas?

Algunas de las especies de grillos de campo tienen alas perfectas y si vuelan. Otras, también llamadas grillos de campo, no pueden volar. ¿A cual grupo pertenece esta?

Buscando, buscando, encontré una foto con esos elitros cortos, pero este, Gryllus campestris, estaba en Checoslovakia. No pude encontrar ninguno cerca de aquí. En E-Fauna, hay otro grillo de campo, G. pennsylvanicus, pero este tiene alas grandes. Y un ovipositor mucho más largo.

Puede ser que la vuelva a ver. Y entonces, le preguntaré — ¿Puedes volar?

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.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

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.

Even the kitchen sink

From the catch-all drawer of forgotten or off-topic photos, I rescued the latest additions. Here they are, in random order; there's no unifying theme.

2. Number plate dug out of a garden, long ago, now resting on a household shelf.

Field cricket found dead in the middle of a school classroom the first day back. It's dry, desert-dry miles, in cricket wanderings, from an outside door. She probably died of thirst.

Look for a mature cricket and examine the end of its abdomen. Locate the paired slender appendages protruding backward from the sides of the abdomen; these are called the cerci and function like a pair of backward antennae.
Look between the cerci to see if an unpaired slender ovipositor projects backward from the end of the abdomen, resembling a spear or needle. ... Your cricket is female if the ovipositor is present and male if not. (From Sciencing)

In most of the photos I looked at, the female has one ovipositor. Why did this one have two, I wondered. I looked at her under the microscope; they're definitely twinned; there's a good gap between the shafts.

I found the answer on BugGuide: the shafts stay together while the cricket lives; when she dies, they may separate.

Top view.

From a northern expedition: Amour de Cosmos Creek, from the bridge.

The Steller's Jay is too far away, but I like this photo, anyhow. Sayward Junction farm.

Scraps of lichen on a twig. Near Upper Campbell Lake.

These Cladonia lichens are extremely common, but very difficult to see clearly, even on the ground; they're covered thickly with tiny scales, arranged in dense clusters.

Cement and wood structure, tossed up on the beach, and colonized by barnacles. Sometimes I wonder how they get there, so far from home.

Stone "planks" at the mid-tidal zone. This pattern of beach rock looks almost too regular to be natural.

Another view of the slabs underfoot.

And I had neglected to mention it earlier, but we're halfway through Arachtober already. We've each been posting a spider photo a day since the beginning of the month. These are two tiny ones that turned up behind (and later in) my kitchen sink.

On tap.

Tiny, tiny. On the back side of a clay tile.

And now that the drawer is empty, I'd better grab the camera and head for the beach again.

Audience of one

Beauty has its hazards. You get used to it, and you stop paying attention. And the golden moments are lost in a welter of fussing about shopping bags and battery chargers and to-do lists.

All summer long, the crickets have been presenting their nightly chorus on my lawn every evening. Such a warm, happy, summery sound! I listened, and listened, and then forgot to listen. I didn't even notice when the season ended and the chirps fell silent.

But I was reminded again this Sunday afternoon, walking by the river in the sunshine, when I heard one lone cricket celebrating the warmth. I looked around and soon found his mate, resting on the side of the path.

Field cricket, female. She doesn't sing. But she does listen.

The background of stones and sticks made it hard to see her, so I tickled her with a dried leaf until she walked onto it, meaning to transfer her to a solid background. She had other ideas; she crawled into the curled edge of the leaf and anchored herself there. No amount of shaking would dislodge her.

"You can't see me in here."

Is it a trick of the light, or is the tip of her ovipositor red?

I left her there, by the side of the trail, listening to her chirping mate.