Snowy Tree Cricket (Oecanthus fultoni)
Song of a Snowy Tree Cricket. A continuos, measured series of chirps.
Perhaps the most familiar of our tree crickets, the Snowy Tree Cricket is the one whose chirp rate can easily be used to estimate the temperature. One popular formula is to count the number of songs given in 13 seconds, and then add that number to forty to yield the temperature in degrees Fahrenheit. It is referred to as “snowy” because individuals are often so pale that they appear white. Snowy Tree Crickets sing from brushy understory plants at the margins of woods or within open woods. During cold spells, they can be found close to the ground on the trunks of small trees — here they probably find a warmer micro-environment.
Song: Song is a very pleasant series of evenly spaced chirps, each chirp consisting of 8 (occasionally 5) pulses at a frequency of 3 kHz. Males prefer to sing from the underside of branches or broad leaves.
The image shows the oscillogram at the top in green and the sound spectrogram at the bottom in orange. This male Snowy Tree Cricket is singing at an ambient temperature of 73F. ©Wil Hershberger.
The image shows the oscillogram at the top in green and the sound spectrogram at the bottom in orange. This male Snowy Tree Cricket is singing at an ambient temperature of 55F. Notice how much lower the pitch of the song is at cooler temperatures (nearly 800Hz) as well as how the pulse rate drops significantly. ©Wil Hershberger.
Sonogram of a Snowy Tree Cricket. © Wil Hershberger.
Snowy Tree Cricket
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Navigate to Species Pages:
Spring and Fall Field Cricket
Southern Wood Cricket
Southeastern Field Cricket
Eastern Striped Cricket
Japanese Burrowing Cricket
Ground Crickets (Nemobiinae):
Allard’s Ground Cricket
Carolina Ground Cricket
Confused Ground Cricket
Striped Ground Cricket
Southern Ground Cricket
Sphagnum Ground Cricket
Variegated Ground Cricket
Spotted Ground Cricket
Tinkling Ground Cricket
Cuban Ground Cricket
Tree Crickets (Oecanthinae):
Black-horned Tree Cricket
Forbes’s Tree Cricket
Broad-winged Tree Cricket
Davis’s Tree Cricket
Fast-calling Tree Cricket
Four-spotted Tree Cricket
Narrow-winged Tree Cricket
Pine Tree Cricket
Snowy Tree Cricket
Two-spotted Tree Cricket
Trigs and Bush Crickets (Eneopterinae & Trigonidiinae):
Jumping Bush Cricket
Columbian Trig
Handsome Trig
Say’s Trig
Thomas’s Trig
Slow-tinkling Trig
Mole Crickets (Gryllotalpidae):
Northern Mole Cricket
Southern Mole Cricket
FAMILY DESCRIPTION
Saltmarsh Meadow Katydid
Short-winged Meadow Katydid
Slender Meadow Katydid
Woodland Meadow Katydid
Black-sided Meadow Katydid
Long-tailed Meadow Katydid
Straight-lanced Meadow Katydid
Agile Meadow Katydid
Dusky-faced Meadow Katydid
Stripe-faced Meadow Katydid
Nimble Meadow Katydid
Black-legged Meadow Katydid
Common Meadow Katydid
Gladiator Meadow Katydid
Handsome Meadow Katydid
Lesser Pine Meadow Katydid
Long-spurred Meadow Katydid
Red-headed Meadow Katydid
Coneheads (Copiphorinae):
FAMILY DESCRIPTION
Round-tipped Conehead
Nebraska Conehead
Robust Conehead
Slightly Musical Conehead
Sword-bearing Conehead
False Robust Conehead
Marsh Conehead
Black-nosed Conehead
True Katydids (Pseudophyllinae):
FAMILY DESCRIPTION
Common True Katydid
False Katydids (Phaneropterinae):
FAMILY DESCRIPTION
Clicker Round-winged Katydid
Common Virtuoso Katydid
Rattler Round-winged Katydid
Oblong-winged Katydid
Great Angle-wing
Lesser Angle-wing
Broad-winged Bush Katydid
Curved-tailed Bush Katydid
Fork-tailed Bush Katydid
Northern Bush Katydid
Texas Bush Katydid
Treetop Bush Katydid
Modest Katydid
Shield-backed Katydids (Tettigoniinae):
FAMILY DESCRIPTION
American Shieldback
Least Shieldback
Protean Shieldback
Robust Shieldback
Roesel’s Katydid
Band-winged Grasshoppers (Oedipodinae):
Boll’s & Carolina Grasshoppers
Marsh Meadow Grasshopper