Wildlife Watching Wednesday: The Common Field Cricket
By: Tom Berg
The melodious chirping of crickets on a quiet summer night is a familiar sound to most people. The crickets we hear are one of several species of common field crickets, and they can be pretty hard to tell apart. Crickets can be found throughout most of the United States and even parts of Canada and Mexico.
Field crickets are typically a shiny black or very dark brown color, and they have large hind legs which they use to jump away from predators. Some species are lighter brown and others are a reddish color. They range in size from a half inch to one inch in length. They have long, sensitive antennae which are used to detect food and perceive nearby threats.
Field crickets live in a wide variety of habitats, including grassy fields and farm pastures, woodlots, forest areas, empty lots, and occasionally in people’s garages and basements. The loud chirping sound of a cricket in your garage gives them away immediately. Male crickets are responsible for the chirping, and they make that noise by rubbing their front wings together. When they are chirping they are actively seeking females for mating.
Crickets will eat just about anything, including grasses and other plants. They also eat fruit, decaying plant matter, and even other dead insects. Some people are afraid of them, but field crickets are actually very beneficial insects. They help control the populations of other insect pests like grasshoppers and moths by eating the eggs and young of those species.
In some parts of the world, crickets are an important food source for people since they are very high in protein. In fact, crickets contain twice as much protein as a similar weight in beef. Of course, it would take a lot of crickets to equal one steak.
If you don’t want to eat crickets, though, you might just want to use them as fishing bait. Panfish like bluegills and sunfish love to eat crickets!
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