(Gryllus veletis & Gryllus pennsylvanicus)
On summer evenings, you will often hear the sounds of the Field Cricket chirping away. It is a pleasant sound. They are shiny black and grow up to 3.5 cm long with short, rounded wings. Did you know that we have two field crickets? One is busy in the spring, the other in the fall. They are Gryllus veletis & Gryllus pennsylvanicus.
They are the most likely to accidentally enter homes in late summer and early fall, looking for a warm haven from colder evenings. Usually, male field crickets will be noticed due to their loud chirping.
Field crickets can be found outdoors in overgrown grassy areas, flower beds, and lawns. Field crickets overwinter as eggs are laid in the soil. The eggs hatch in the late spring or early summer, and the nymphs develop slowly, reaching adulthood in late summer and early fall.
The nymphs look like smaller versions of adults with no wings. The adults mate and lay eggs in late summer and fall before dying of old age or freezing temperatures. The life cycle of a field cricket is about ninety days.
Adult male crickets chirp by rubbing their wings together to attract females, and only the males sing. There are songs for courtship, fighting, and sounding an alarm. The principal role is to bring the sexes together with different songs in different species. Male crickets sing by rubbing the edge at the base of one front wing along a ridge on the bottom side of the other front wing, resulting in the sound of chirping.
The number of chirps varies with the temperature, with more and faster chirping at higher temperatures. Chirps vary from 4 to 5 to more than 200 per minute. The song is amplified by the wing surface.