Crickets chirping: That sweet, sad sound of summer's end

NOTE (added July 22, 2015):  My blog stats show that people keep getting here by searching for pages about crickets chirping in spring.  Crickets do not not chirp then, because they do not yet have their wings to make the sound.  So if you are hearing high-pitched chirpy sounds at night, it is most likely you are hearing Spring Peeper frogs or some similar species.  These make one of the first night sounds in early spring.  Read below about how and when crickets do chirp.

*  *  *

I heard my first cricket chirp of the season last night.  I love this sound, but I always feel a pang of sadness as well, because it signals the beginning of the end of summer.  Here in Minnesota, the chirping usually starts in mid-August, but is a bit early this year, perhaps because of the unusually warm weather.   Hearing crickets early does not necessarily signal an early winter, because warm weather can speed up the life cycle of these insects.

Adult male field cricket
(courtesy of OrganicGardeningInfo.com)

Of course, crickets don't really know in a conscious way that fall is coming.  The reason they don't chirp earlier is that they don't yet have the proper equipment to make the sound.   Crickets go through a life cycle called direct development:  egg, immature stage, adult.

When they hatch from their eggs in spring, the tiny hatchlings already look like crickets, but do not yet have their wings.  As they grow, they shed their skins several times until they get wings in the last, adult stage.

And it is the wings that the male cricket rubs together to make his chirps.  (Common folklore has him rubbing his legs together, but that is not correct.)  You can get an approximation of the temperature in Fahrenheit by counting the number of chirps in 15 seconds, then add 40. The reason this works is because crickets, being cold-blooded creatures, are more active on warm nights than chilly ones.

The adult female cricket also has wings, but they are smooth and do not have the ridges that the male rubs to make the chirp, so she does not sing.  This is one way you can tell an adult male from a female.  You can also tell a female by the long stiff ovipositor extending from the tip of her abdomen, which she uses to lay her eggs in the ground in late summer or fall.  The adult crickets die off with the coming of winter, and the eggs hatch in the spring to produce a new generation.

In China and other Asian countries, crickets are considered good luck, and are often kept for pets in specially-designed cages.   Some European traditions hold that a cricket chirping in the house is a sign of future prosperity.  (I sure wish this one were true!)  When I was a child, I kept crickets in a terrarium in my room and enjoyed hearing them sing at night.   They ate vegetable trimmings (especially cukes and tomatoes) and often lived through the winter (which would not happen in the wild here.  Crickets die with the frost and their offspring winter over as eggs.)  Some of the modern "bug cages" now available would probably work just as well.  Just be sure to take good care of your crickets, the same as you would with any other companion animal.

Birds flocking, crickets chirping -- Rosh Hashanah is coming soon!

 I woke up very early this morning and went outside for a dawn walk, to be met with the squawking of a huge flock of birds waking up in a distant tree. (Probably starlings, they were too far away to positively ID.)  I don't have a telephoto lens, just a digital point-and-shoot, but was able to snap this pic just as the flock took off with the sunrise.   Even though it's not the best photo I ever took, I'm pretty proud of it -- migrating birds have gathered in that same tree for years, and this is the first time I was able to capture them taking flight.

Flocks of chattering birds mean autumn is coming.  So does another sound:  the chirping of crickets.  I have always heard this as a sweet-sad sound: sweet, because I love the song of crickets, and sad, because it marks the beginning of the end of summer.  Crickets are around earlier, of course, but they do not get their song until they shed their skins for the final time and the males get wings with the "instrument" to make the sound.  It is the wings -- not the legs as is commonly thought -- that crickets rub together for this sound. 

A third sound that I associate with fall is not made by nature, although it does require a natural  object to produce it.  This is the sound of the shofar or ram's horn, that Jews blow on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, as well as during the Hebrew month of Elul that preceeds the holy day.   The Jewish calendar is lunar, so the exact date of Rosh Hashanah varies form year to year, but it is usually in September.  (This year it is quite late, beginning after sundown on the 28th.)

Typical ram's horn Shofar

Some Christian Bibles mistakenly translate shofar as "trumpet" and refer to Rosh Hashanah as "the Feast of Trumpets."  The first time somebody asked me about the Feast of Trumpets, I had no idea what they were talking about, because no Jew would ever mistake a shofar for a trumpet.  Trumpets were also blown in the ancient Jerusalem Temple, but a shofar is definitely not a trumpet!  The shofar is an ancient, primitive horn that is literally made from an animal's  horn, usually from a male sheep but it can also be from a goat or gazelle.  (Never a cow, though, because of the sin of the Golden Calf.)   The shofar produces an archetypal, visceral sound that shakes the very soul and is meant to wake us up spiritually.  "Wake up, wake up!" the shofar says, "Return to the path of God, your Creator!"

I suppose that in the Southern Hemisphere, where it is now the beginning of spring, not fall, there are other nature sounds that Jews associate with Rosh Hashanah.  But for me, it is the sound of the crickets and the calls of migrating birds that remind me the High Holy Days are coming.