Yesterday evening, right before the weather turned nasty, as I stood on the deck over my garden I suddenly caught a sound wave, one that I immediately recognized but had never before heard around my house. I ran to grab my recorder and was able to capture a snippet of the call. Seeing me pointing…
Category: Orthoptera
On the benefits of random collecting
In 1911, after a short and apparently unsatisfying stint as a lawyer, Keppel H. Barnard left his native London and joined the staff of the South African Museum in Cape Town. First a mere lab assistant, he quickly ascended the ranks, in 10 short years reaching the position of the museum’s director, which he held…
Bog killers
The one thing about plants that we take for granted is that they cannot really hurt you. Sure, some are full of toxic compounds and can be deadly poisonous if ingested. Others are covered with nasty spines or irritating hairs, and a tree can fall on your head during windy weather and crack your skull….
The chorus grows
On this sunny Columbus Day I stayed at home, which allowed me to discover another beautiful musician in my garden’s chorus, the Handsome Trig (Phyllopalpus pulchellus) (also known as the Red-headed Bush Cricket). I already wrote about this species, but I never suspected that I would find one of my favorite North American orthopterans in…
Music in my head
I have always wanted to be a musician. Not that I have any particular musical talents (and never learned to read music), but my fascination with sound was definitely one of the reasons for becoming an expert in the taxonomy of orthopteroid insects, nature’s preeminent musicians. Few things are more pleasant to me than sitting…
A song of ancient Earth
Those who have been reading this blog with some regularity may have noticed that I find virtually all organisms equally fascinating. But some are more equal than others, and few animals and plants excite me more than phylogenetic relics. These are the last remaining members of lineages that were once dominant, or at least species-rich,…
The Smaller Majority 