A brown cricket that leaps from the leaves after dark
On August 26, at the Shady Side Academy Senior School campus in Fox Chapel, a mottled brown cricket sat motionless on a leaf, its long, thread-like antennae sweeping the air in slow arcs. It stayed perfectly still as the camera moved in, relying on its speckled camouflage against the green. When I finally shifted too close, it vanished in a single sharp leap, the way these crickets earn their common name.
It was Hapithus saltator, the jumping bush cricket, a member of the bush cricket group in the order Orthoptera. Recent classifications place the genus in the family Oecanthidae, alongside the tree crickets, though older references list it under Gryllidae. The species name saltator is Latin for “dancer” or “jumper,” and it fits: disturbed individuals explode upward and disappear into the foliage before the eye can track them. The mottled brown body, long antennae, and folded wings that cover the abdomen are typical of the group, and the hind legs are built for those sudden launches. These crickets are mostly nocturnal, sheltering in shrubs and low vegetation by day and singing after dusk, when the males produce a rapid, repeated trill from the bushes. This individual was identified to species level, and the identification awaits community confirmation.
