Bug that makes a cricket soun
Location: San Francisco, CA
September 28, 2011 11:00 pm
Evidently this critter kept my wife up most of the night last night with a cricket like sound, until she tracked it down and whacked it. The body’s about 5/8” long. It kind of looks like a caddis fly, which I know from flyfishing. but I’ve never seen this exact bug before- it doesn’t fit into any of the categories of typical house pests. She said the sound was pretty loud. We’ve had a lot of very warm weather here lately, which is unusual.Any ideas?
Signature: Clifton Lemon
Hi Clifton,
In our opinion, whacking a harmless Tree Cricket for calling out to attract a mate constitutes Unnecessary Carnage.
Tree cricket huh? Wow. Agreed about the unnecesssariness of the whacking. Thanks! I was stumped.
We believe it may be a Snowy Tree Cricket, Oecanthus fultoni. The Snowy Tree Cricket is also called a Thermometer Cricket because, according to Charles Hogue in Insects of the Los Angeles Basin, you can tell the temperature in degrees Fahrenheit “if one counts the number of chirps in 13 seconds and adds 40.” According to BugGuide: “These are the crickets you hear in movies and on TV when they want to show that it’s out in nature and very quiet.”
P.S. Perhaps it was a hot evening and your wife was having a bad night.
Cool, thanks so much for your excellent work. I am edified,
Clifton