The katydids were loud last night, and seemingly unaffected by the fireworks. Their numbers seem good this year, although I don’t know if they have peaked yet.
I said yesterday that only the males sing, and I believe that’s true. But the females do have a voice, if you could call it that. Late in August, on a still warm night, you can sometimes hear them say, “nik, nik,” just before they fly to another tree to mate with the male they’ve chosen. This has been noted as one of the exceptions to the great sociobiology theory that explains everything by reducing it to a biological urge. The rule is that the male exposes himself to more danger to mate. With katydids, the opposite is true, because the female exposes herself to predation when she leaves the cover of her tree to mate with the male in his tree. This is explained, or explained away, by the fact that the male has a meal for her as a reward for sex. You can make your own mind up about that one.
My old dad, back thirty some years ago – when you didn’t need air conditioning here – loved to open up the house at night and let the katydids sing him to sleep. He said he never slept better than when they were singing. I imagine that went back to his days as a boy in Trenton, New Jersey, where he slept on the screened back porch of my grandfather’s house in the summer. There was an old chaise lounge there, of the sort that people made with a frame of 2x4s drilled to accept 1/2″ hemp rope for the netting. I remember sitting there, watching it get dark with the old people every night, and how many lightening bugs there were in the long, narrow yard.
I used to open up the house in the summer myself, and listen to the katydids. But what I really loved was listening to the hoot owls (barred owls) call to each other across Cutcane Creek. Sometimes, there would be half a dozen, calling half the night. They’re gone from here now, like the grouse and the quail. I imagine the density got to be too much for them, and they moved further into the woods. I hope that they’re still out there, anyway.
We still do the old things, like watching the sunset and then watching it get dark before bed, and sitting and watching the fire on cold winter nights. Maybe if more people did, there would be more love in the world, or more love for the natural world,