Nick Hamblet writes to me to suggest that the 'early' insect singer that I have been hearing out my window is a Slightly Musical Conehead, one of a number of grass-loving, early-singing cone-headed katydids! Don't you love that name? Coneheads are katydids with, you guessed it, cone heads and there are a whole bunch of them. I think conehead might be right but I'm not sure about the species -- at least going by the recordings that I've heard. Hamblet also says that he has heard Field Cricket and Lyric Cicada already this season. I also heard an evening (or night) singer last night (after I sent out the blog) which might have been another one of the cicadas. Just sorting out the 'songs' of these summertime insects is a big challenge.
The tide was low on the pond this morning and there was a Black-crowned Night-Heron working the muddy edge. A cuckoo was calling from the treetops in the woods north of the house. This was the slow, even coo-coo-coo-coo call that I used to ascribe, erroneously, to the Black-billed Cuckoo. This is a call of the Yellow-billed Cuckoo (the Black-billed call is also even but faster and often in rhythmic groups of two to five calls). I should add that these are both American cuckoos and they do not sing the cuckoo-clock call of the European or Eurasian cuckoo and which, unlike that famous cuckoo of European folklore, they mostly build their own nests and raise their own young.
Eric Salzman
Monday, July 6, 2015
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