Nature Walk: Grasshoppers

Meadow grasshopper (Conocephalus sp.) female. (Photo by Anita Barbour)

Looking along road edges, walls and fences, redlegs were all I saw. Then in a church parking lot at last I spotted a big female differential grasshopper sprawling on the asphalt a few feet from a wall of mugwort at the far edge of the pavement. It was morning, still damp and dewy. I hoped the chill would linger long enough to allow me to fetch Anita from her Origami class, come back and snap the old grasshopper girl’s portrait. When we arrived at the church parking lot the grasshopper hadn’t moved an inch, but the temperature had risen. Warmed and maybe more alert, the hopper leapt once on Anita’s approach, but stopped for a quick portrait before jumping into the mugwort and out of sight.

We kept looking around the pavement edges, then in the little shrub-planted, weed-grown islands of the lot. In the sparse grass near the curb Anita spotted a long-horned meadow grasshopper (Conocephalus sp.). It hopped into the more sheltering shrubbery, where the well-disguised creature, apparently confident in its camouflage, stayed put. On the road out I spied a “leaf,” really a bush katydid (Scudderia sp.), walking toward the weedy edge. Katydids are really long-horned grasshoppers like the meadow grasshoppers, so they count as subjects here.

If you’ve noticed the Latin names, you may wonder why we encountered so many Melanoplus species. This is the largest genus of short-horned grasshoppers (“horn” meaning “antenna”), and includes the migratory “locust” of the Midwestern plains. The largest genus of long-horned grasshoppers is Conocephalus, literally “conehead” for their slanted, pointed heads.

If you’re looking for a new nature interest, try grasshoppers. Fall is a good time to start. It does appear that there may not be as many as in years past, but the Northeast is not the heartland of North American grasshopper diversity. The very few grasshopper field guides list far more genera and species for the Midwest and Southwest. There are some forest grasshoppers, but the majority of species live in grasslands and deserts. In places resembling those habitats, even around here grasshoppers seem to be plentiful enough to find and enjoy.++