Summertime Messengers

In our temperate climate, the seasons are in a constant state of change. Along the way there are several benchmarks.

The first katydid to proclaim its summer chorus is an example. This year, the katydids made their local debut on July 31, just a day earlier than their debut of the past two summers. Interestingly, I was in State College and heard katydids on July 24, indicating that Centre County is at least one week ahead of us when it comes to climate.

Katydids are related to both grasshoppers and crickets. They look like a green grasshopper, except they are much taller with a much higher back.

Like crickets and grasshoppers, katydids feed upon leafy vegetation. The species of katydid with which we are familiar feeds and lives among the foliage of trees and bushes.

Once these vocal insects begin their nightly serenades in the middle of summer, they continue providing musical entertainment until the first hard frosts of autumn. In recent years with unusually warm autumns, I have heard katydids as late as fall turkey season in November.

Only the male katydids vocalize. Like crickets, katydids make their singing noises with their wings. They use a scraper at the base of one front wing to strike a file on the other front wing to sing out the familiar cadence that we interpret as "kat-y-did, kat-ydid n't."

These vocalizations are used for attracting mates and challenging other males. August and September just wouldn't be the same without their nightly choruses. Like fresh sweet corn, juicy blackberries and garden ripe tomatoes, the second half of summer would not quite be the same without the nightly katydid choruses.

It faintly hints of the coming autumn and of cooler nights. Bucks shedding their velvet, and archery season are just around the corner, it proclaims.

To sit outside at night and listen to the katydid's cadence is to view a portal into the near future. If you close your eyes, you will see a landscape painted in bright vivid colors. You will hear the harsh, scolding bark of a gray squirrel high in a golden foliaged hickory tree. Perhaps a wideracked buck will materialize from the sound of dry crunching leaves. It is just a matter of taking the time to listen.

Here in the Sinnemahoning watershed it has been a dry summer. Although we have been receiving just enough rain to keep the garden growing, our streams have really suffered from the lack of any significant groundwater replenishing rains.

According to the USGS stream flow website for Pennsylvania, the Driftwood Branch of Sinnemahoning Creek has reached its lowest flow of the year, 15 cubic feet per second. This is only about one-third of the median flow for this date.

We are fortunate, though. Just south of us below Interstate 80, the situation is much worse. Many forests in this area have also received a double blow, considering that their trees were also completely defoliated by gypsy moths earlier this summer. I'm sure the oak mast crop in those regions will reflect these factors.

Here in northcentral Pennsylvania it appears that we should be looking at a decent acorn crop this fall. Both red and white oak trees in many areas are bearing good mast. Apple trees also appear to have a good soft mast crop.

Only time will tell, but it looks like things are shaping up for a good hunting season.