A green hitchhiker on the last warm days
On October 21 in Pittsburgh, a bright green katydid was clinging to a black plastic fitting on a piece of outdoor equipment, as if it had hitched a ride there and was waiting for the next leg of the trip. It let me move it to my hand without protest, and there it sat, legs splayed, antennae sweeping, a small piece of summer that had not yet been told summer was over.
This is a meadow katydid of the genus Orchelimum, a member of the katydid family Tettigoniidae in the order Orthoptera. The genus holds about 21 species, nearly all of them North American, and most of them at home in exactly the kind of grassy, weedy edges that surround school grounds. The bright green body, long antennae and neatly folded wings are the look of the group, and identifying individuals to species usually takes a closer look at the face and the song, so this one stays at genus level for now, awaiting community confirmation.
By late October, most meadow katydids are gone. The adults appear in mid-summer, sing through August and September, and the first hard frost finishes them. A katydid out on October 21 had survived the season almost to its end, which is why it felt worth photographing: every warm day in late autumn is borrowed time for an insect like this.
Meadow katydids are singers, though their songs are less musical than musical-sounding. Males rub their forewings together at dusk, producing a buzzing, raspy call that carries across a field of grass. In the fall their chorus is a way to tell the season is turning: it starts strong in August, thins out in October, and stops entirely at frost. This one was silent when I met it, but it had clearly made it through the autumn so far, and that was impressive enough.
