Berrien Explorations

October 2, 2018 at 6:08 am (singing insects)
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by Carl Strang

The end of August found me in Berrien County, Michigan. The first stop was the Butternut Creek Fen preserve, where I met tree cricket specialist Nancy Collins. We spent an afternoon and evening seeking tamarack tree crickets, which had been found there years ago. There are abundant tamarack trees, but we were puzzled by the crickets’ no-show. None sang, and hours of arm-tiring sweeping of foliage with long-handled nets, as well as visual scanning of branches, were fruitless. We found other species, though, and provided the site owners with a list of what we observed.

When Nancy found this fork-tailed bush katydid I was hopeful that it would prove to be a rarer cousin, the treetop bush katydid, but no dice.

Oblong-winged katydids also are at the site. My new white chamber setup worked well in the back of the car.

The next day I wandered in Berrien, St. Joseph and LaPorte Counties. The best find was a new site for me, Glassman Park in Berrien County. I bypassed some nice-looking forest, then was captured by a mundane looking grassy area adjacent to the I-94 right-of-way. It proved to have some interesting grasshoppers.

Most of these proved to be pasture grasshoppers, only the second population of this locally distributed species I have found in my study region.

A second species had a much different look.

The handsome grasshopper has an even more slant-faced profile.

With a color pattern like this, the handsome grasshopper is well named.

The day was my final in Berrien County for 2018, but there is more singing insect work to be done there in coming years. That is bound to include at least one more listening stop at Butternut Creek.

 

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One Last Look Back

December 14, 2017 at 7:29 am (birds, dragonflies and damselflies, singing insects)
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by Carl Strang

My recent blog posts have shared highlights of this year’s field season, as I searched for singing insects in the 22-county area I define as the Chicago region. Those accounts haven’t told the whole story, though, and I have a few last photos to shake out of the bag. These fill out some of the experience of doing this kind of regional study.

For instance, other animals have enhanced the delight.

The chalk-fronted corporal is a dragonfly I have encountered only in the northern portion of the region, in this case at the Lulu Lake Nature Preserve in northern Walworth County, Wisconsin.

Walsh’s grasshopper was a new one for me. Not a singing species, but an interesting find at the Poverty Prairie in DuPage County’s Waterfall Glen Forest Preserve.

Turkey vultures assemble at dusk on the Culver, Indiana, water tower. My travels take me back to my home town a few times each season.

Interesting and beautiful scenes are to be found in the relatively undisturbed wild areas which are my main destinations.

An early evening rainbow at Conrad Station in the Indiana Kankakee Sands presaged a thunderstorm-dodging drive home on July 2.

Pinholes between tree leaves cast solar eclipse shadows at Blackwell Forest Preserve. Though the moon covered around 90% of the sun at peak, I detected no change in singing insect activity.

One of the more beautiful scenes was this panne in the Indiana dunes.

I had hoped to find delicate meadow katydids in the pannes. Dusky-faced meadow katydids were a good find there, but that species has a solid hold in other dunes wetlands.

The Pembroke Savanna in the Illinois Kankakee Sands is one of my favorite sites.

I believe these white pines at Warren Dunes State Park in Berrien County, Michigan, are the same ones where Richard Alexander found treetop bush katydids in 1971. He described the trees as small, but all are tall now. They still foster pine tree crickets, but I did not find any bush katydids.

I ended up with 115 county records for the season, totaling all newly found singing insect species over all the counties.

So far, I have found sprinkled grasshoppers only in oak savannas on sand soils.

Dusky-faced meadow katydids at the Indiana Kankakee Sands were a Newton County record.

This curve-tailed bush katydid at the Jasper-Pulaski Fish and Wildlife Area in Indiana provided a Jasper County record for my study.

I found a healthy population of long-tailed meadow katydids, including this brown-legged male, at Ferson Creek Fen in Kane County.

The Ferson Creek population also had green-legged variants, including this female.

Lisa Rainsong, Wendy Partridge and I drove south to Loda Prairie to check out the bush cicadas there. I concluded this year that the species does not occur in the Chicago region.

This Texas bush katydid was singing in early October at Springbrook Prairie Forest Preserve, DuPage County. I had an observation of this species on October 17, my latest ever in the region.

Most of the long winter remains, and as I compile data, write reports, and visit museums, I will be looking forward to another collection of rich experiences as I resume my field study in 2018.

 

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