August's chorus

One of my favourite things about late summer is the sound of insects everywhere. Walk through a meadow on a warm night and it's almost deafening. They seem to be singing at every opportunity now, as if sensing the warmth won't last long this year. That thought saddens me. I don't care for the unusual heat we had in July, but do love golden days lingering into September.

Yesterday sodden clouds hung low over the city. It felt like an early autumn sky. The woods along the Eramosa River was still and expectant. Down galleries of the park, rows of willows lurched into pale, washed distance. Hardly anything moved. Restless spirits, unseen birds conversed overhead: a nuthatch's nasal peent, chickadees, a rose-breasted grosbeak's brittle call note. The lovely grey catbird is so-called because of it's mewing cry, however it seems to ask a plaintive "Why?", a question that would never bother any self-respecting cat. At last I spotted a song sparrow. He scurried upward from the path, escaping through a veil of leaves. A moment later his splendid song resounded from a high branch over the river, sunlight tearing rainclouds. But nothing rent the heavy atmosphere. After one nostalgic, summery phrase, he fell silent.

At water's edge I encountered cryptic movements: quick, evasive rustles under bowing grass blades. They turned out to be numerous leopard frogs. I couldn't see one until I followed, flushing it finally into muddy shallows, where the handsome fellow lay, eyes glistening, certain of his camouflage. A stand of nettles prevented further rudeness from me.

The trees and air over the pond were utterly motionless, as if frozen amid rampant growth. I might have startled forest and stream in a moment of indiscreet lushness, but actually their watchfulness had nothing to do with me. Apart from cautious frogs, the landscape carried on its meditation, paying me no heed.

Underlining its stillness was the resonant chorus of insects. In the adjoining meadow I recognized bright chirps of black crickets, which used to get into our house at Poplar Bluff every summer, to our chagrin and occasionally the cats' delight. One would inevitably set up shop in the corner under the stairs and carry on mercilessly at night. A field full of crickets is a peaceful thing, but one cricket in a silent house is enough to keep everyone awake.

Beneath their trills, another sound permeated the maple woods. It was less shrill, but more constant, the sound I most associate with summer nights: layers of many small voices. Whether they carried on continuously, or kept replacing one another, I couldn't tell, but the effect was a uniform wall of sound one might almost forget if submerged in it long enough. What insect makes this sound, I must learn before I die. I suspect it's another sort of cricket, but I could spend an entire afternoon tramping around the woods and never discover one of these ventriloquists. As soon as I draw near enough that one voice becomes discernible from the mass, the singer feels my footsteps and falls silent.

I did spot an immature katydid (Pterophylla sp.), which proved the most entertaining playmate of the day. Katydids, like praying mantises, seem to have an uncanny intelligence, but with mantids it's in the way they look at you (no matter that you're many thousand times their size, that terrible gaze makes you feel edible). With a katydid, it's the nimble movements, seemingly less reflexive than a grasshopper's. But this creature is no predator; it's analogous to a rabbit. The antennae are counterparts to the sensitive ears of Peter or Fiver. And the hind legs are set mousetraps. This katydid didn't immediately leap away. It obviously liked the Eupatorium leaf it occupied. Each time the camera lens infringed on its margin of safety, the creature would scuttle through a dinner hole to the underside and hang there regarding me deviously, antennae twitching. A katydid might be nearly as good to eat as a rabbit, but in the cataclysmic event I'm ever driven to seek insect food, I'll hesitate before wasting energy on clever katydids. At first hint of my persistence in our game of hide-and-seek, this creature sprang, and vanished utterly. Not until I got home and saw my accidental flash portrait of the creature did I notice the size of its antennae, many times its body length.

What else I noticed in the day's photos was the moisture: crystal droplets hanging from every leaf and petal. Like on this jewelweed, Impatiens capensis. This plant also reminds me of home, where it covered the shady bluff above the beach, and was a favourite of hummingbirds.



( the katydid )

Meez

( The animated Van )