Songs of Insects

Nimble Meadow Katydid (Orchelimum volantum)

Song of a Nimble Meadow Katydid (scroll down for explanation and additional recordings!).

Nimble Meadow Katydids are slender, long-winged and covered is small dark spots. Their faces are light-cream in color with extensive dark-brown mottling along the caudal aspect next to the pronotal shield. The top of the pronotum and wings are a dingy-brown helping them to blend in with the emergent vegetation in their freshwater wetland homes. They can be found from early August through frost.

As the name implies, this species is very hard to catch – jumping long distances multiple times when evading predators. This habit and the fact that they are fond of wetlands with knee to waist-deep water makes the capture all the more tenuous.

A big thank you to Carl Strang for collecting this specimen for inclusion on this site.

Left cercus of Nimble Meadow Katydid

• click to enlarge •

Nimble Meadow Katydids are found from central Michigan south to the lower third of Ohio and west to extreme eastern Kansas and Nebraska. A small population can be found in southern New Jersey.

Song: The song of the Nimble Meadow Katydid is distinctive – a quiet pulsing of 0.3 second, low-pitched buzzes separated by nearly a second of silence. The major frequency bands of the broad-spectrum song are 8.7, 10, 13, and 14.7 kHz. Each buzz is composed of 20-24 pulses.

Sonogram of a Nimble Meadow Katydid. © Wil Hershberger 2017. Click to play.