coneheads and cuckoos

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