Crickets and Katydids in the House 2023
Listening in Nature
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3M ago
   It’s time for my annual “Crickets and Katydids in the House” to close out another calendar year of Listening in Nature blog posts.  Although the indoor numbers are diminishing as these elderly insects gradually fade away, we’ve had another fascinating festival of singers this autumn. As you can see, Nikos has been keeping an eye on the singers and their mesh butterfly cages in the dining room.  We have a pair of south windows there that both orthopterans and felines enjoy.   Does Nikos present problems for the insects? Not typically. In fact, I’ve repeatedly fou ..read more
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A Slightly Musical Surprise
Listening in Nature
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7M ago
  Where should I explore this summer and early fall? I’m not doing a survey of a specific location, but instead will be revisiting some of the places I’ve studied in the past to see and hear what’s similar and different. I decided to start with Frohring Meadows in the Geauga County Park District. I love its wide-open meadows, its wetland, and all that sky above me. I decided to walk the trail that encircles the wetland. Singing insects continued to be later than expected, but the Sword-bearing Coneheads were well established, and both the Gladiator Meadow Katydids and Broad-winged Bush Ka ..read more
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Unsettled Summer
Listening in Nature
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8M ago
                                                              It was a strange – and increasingly unsettling – transition from spring into summer this year, and August’s approach toward early autumn already feels rushed. May was unlike any I can remember. There was no rain for three weeks, and as a ..read more
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Is It Noise or Not Noise?
Listening in Nature
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1y ago
  It’s July 1st, and the 2021-22 COVID academic year is eight weeks behind me. When I returned to the forests, meadows, and wetlands in May, I began my homecoming process by simply going to places I thought might be adequately quiet for listening and recording. That’s not very easy, of course, since there’s noise almost everywhere. Most of it is generated by humans, and some of these sounds are more disturbing to me that others. So what is noise, what’s not noise, and what falls somewhere in between? It's somewhat subjective, and I hadn’t thought about it more specifically until now. I k ..read more
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Taking Attendance
Listening in Nature
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2y ago
    NE Ohio did not have a gentle autumn decrescendo this year. I thought it might be yet another warm fall after the hot weather in the first half of October, but a dramatic change in late fall brought early winter temperatures and an end to the singing insect season that often lasts into early November near Lake Erie. Instead of late-season field explorations, I sat inside with crickets and katydids singing in the dining room and considered what felt so odd about this year’s field season. It wasn’t the crickets. All the various crickets I expected to find were present everywher ..read more
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Crickets and Katydids in the House 2021: Orchestrating with Orthopterans
Listening in Nature
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2y ago
 Black-legged Meadow Katydid on a cattail leaf in his singing cage in the house.   It’s time for my annual post about crickets and katydids singing in the house, so welcome back to the south-facing windows of our little bungalow to meet this year’s ensemble!   There are the regulars each year, such as the Black-horned Tree Crickets and the look-alike sound-alike Forbes’s Tree Crickets whose ranges overlap here in NE Ohio.                          &n ..read more
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The Mixed Ensembles of June
Listening in Nature
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2y ago
  June is a time of transition in what we hear in nature. Although the avian migrants have moved on and summer resident birds have established their nesting territories, there's still plenty of birdsong. But the sounds of June are not only birds' territorial songs and begging nestlings and fledglings. The actual ensembles of June are subtly complex. I’m always curious about who is singing with whom and when, and this year I decided to see if I could document the month with recordings. Here’s a Prelude to June: I invite you to listen while you continue reading.   Lisa Rainsong · Jun ..read more
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Going Home, Coming Home
Listening in Nature
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3y ago
   I love March and April, as you probably know by now, but sometimes I wish May could slow down just a bit. I’d like a little more time to appreciate all the birds that are leaving, those that are passing through, and those that are arriving to spend the summer here. Mid-spring brings travelers that use our welcoming backyard as a rest stop on their journey north. I’ve been keeping records since 1994, and I know who to expect and when they’re likely to pass through. There’s something reassuring about looking in my backyard record book and knowing almost to the day when various bir ..read more
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A Chorus of Friends
Listening in Nature
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3y ago
  Pickerel Frog at North Chagrin Reservation, Cleveland Metroparks. You'll read about him and hear this impressive individual in this post   Contrast and continuity. I talk about the necessity of both in my music theory classes but wasn’t expecting to see these concepts demonstrated so profoundly in my life this year. Yet when I reread my April blog post from the past year –“Covid-free Concerts, that’s exactly what I saw– the continuity of the natural world providing a sense of balance, predictability, and continuity when so much else was about unexpected contrasts. A year after the ..read more
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Safety, Refuge, and Research
Listening in Nature
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3y ago
   I’m going to close my 2020 series of Listening in Nature posts with stories, photos, and recordings from my four-month field research project for the Geauga (County) Park District. Field research is typically immersive and richly rewarding for me. In this COVID year, my two places of safety and refuge were my home and the parks I studied. This was the first year since 2012 that I’d spent my summer and fall studying singing insects for the Geauga Park District (GPD). I’ve surveyed crickets and katydids in all the counties in the extended Cleveland region of NE Ohio and created an ..read more
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