Page:Insects - Their Ways and Means of Living.djvu/102

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cricket, Orocharis saltator (Fig. 4z), who comes on the stage late in the season, about the middle of August, or shortly after. His notes are loud, clear, piping chirps with a rising inflection toward the end, suggestive of the notes of a srnall tree toad, and they at once str]ke the listener as sornething new and different in the insect prograrn. The play- ers, however, are at first very hard to lo- cate, for they do not -_ perform continuously --one note seerns to come from here, a ? second from over there, and a third from a different an- gle, so that it is al- most impossible to place any one of thern. But after a

week or so the crick- Fiç. 4?- The lumping bush cricket, Orocharis saltator ets becoITle more nu- Upper figure, a male; lower, a female ITlerous and each player more persistent till soon their notes are the predorni- nant sounds in the.nightly concerts, standing out loud and clear against the whole tree-cricket chorus. As Riley says, this chirp "is so distifictive that when once studied it is never lost arnid the louder racket of the katydids and other night choristers." After the first of Septernber it is not hard to locate one of the perforrners, and when discovered with a flashlight, he is round to be a rnediurn-sized, brown, short-legged cricket, built sornewhat on the style of Grvllus but srnaller (Fig. 49-). The male, however, while s?nging raises his wings straight up, after the rnanner of the tree crickets, and he too, carries a basin ofliquid on his back rnuch sought after

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