Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Wildlife Management Where have the Crickets gone?

Walking in the dark with my dog I noticed there are no crickets noises. None. I live in an 8 1/2 acre woods, my pond area is now a woods of 5 1/2 acres and I walk around the edge of my fields that pass by a 30 acre woods and with not cricket sounds at all.

Fifteen years go I seeded my area with Praying mantis eggs and had lots of them until recently and now I see none. I have seen some grasshoppers but not nearly as many as in past years and I have seen very few butterflys. A dozen years ago I was the first to report in my county that there were no honeybees.

I was wondering if anyone else living in an agricultural area is experiencing the same thing?

John, the crickets and big yellow grasshoppers all moved down here. At 4 in the morning, the sound is almost deafening.

We have tons of Killdeer on our property, and they love the crickets/grasshoppers.

John, I've recently seen many mantis but all were very small, less than an inch long.

I no longer hear crickets and chimney swifts but others with better hearing do, so I know that the problem is with myself.

Crickets are annoying around here.. luckily I have loud mouth Bullfrogs to drown them out.. Except for the crickets that are in my basement do to my son's careless feeding of his bearded dragon.

John, I can put my hand over my right ear and all the crickets are gone. Remove my hand and they magically appear again.....

Yep, high frequency hearing loss in the left ear.

Say it ain't so!!! Huh? Sounds like you need better noise suppressors on your guns... Wish I would have taken better care of my ears when I was younger!!!

I have been hearing and seeing things this year I haven't seen or heard in years... Not sure if it is the new home location or just paying more attention to detail?..

Stuff comes and goes in cycles. A number of years ago my brother (that moved far away only comes back once a year) lamented there were no rabbits. He saw lots of rabbits when he was a kid and now no rabbits. Well it wasn't but a couple years and we had rabbits out the wazooo. He had noticed the lack of rabbits in a coyote up cycle. They come and go. I've been on the farm 60 years now and that is one thing I have learned. Everything has a season. But some "seasons" are six or seven years in cycle.

A few years ago he lamented about few GBH and the rookeries (high up in the tree top) at the nearby creek were smaller than he remembers. Now I have Herons out the wazoo. Green, white, GBH. I would like to see a few less Herons. It comes and goes. Always has.

Will we nuke everything and make the land barren some day? Maybe, but I have not seen any evidence of it in my lifetime. Changing and varying populations? Of course. We used to have more quail and no wild turkeys. Now we have nuisance levels of turkeys and fewer quail. Wait till we have a good spring flood during the hatch, and we will have fewer turkeys. Hardly ever saw a deer when I was a kid. Now we have herds of them damaging crops. The crickets and frogs were deafening around my pond last night, and bugs................ we have adequate insects. If the suitable habitat and conditions are there, it will come and thrive.

It does seem that there are less crickets than in years past here...but I also have noticed an uptick in the types of critters that eat them, so that may be part of it.

Side note, I counted 40 barn swallows and purple martins on the power line between the hay barn and the machine shed yesterday. That's a bug eating machine right there!

Scott, I have the same problem except high frequency loss in right ear - left ear OK but folks mumble and talk too fast.

My friends know that I have a Great Depression mentality but others just call me a tight wad, so Google up VitaSound and check out the reviews...

Amazing digital devise that fits in your pocket like a cell phone - manufactured by a hearing aid company but can't call them hearing aids. Has adjustment for different frequencies, volume control and TV transmitter hook-up and receiver.

I would never purchase a gadget like this but was reviewed by Dallas Morning News technology guy.
Retail price ~1/3 price of maybe one hearing aid and mine was sale half price.

No one pays any attention to anyone with ear buds these days - my hearing loss problem is solved.
G/

Crickets here in Kansas. I have seen plenty of small ones in the past few days.

I wondered the same about thing fireflies. Then I noticed one evening there was a lot of them flying under my trees and my neighbors' trees.

Here in Kansas the grasshoppers are terrible bad know a farmer that had his whole field of soybeans ate by grasshoppers. My milo food plots that I planted for the quail are covered in grasshoppers. I like to take my dip net and catch 50 or so and take them with me when i feed my fish. They seem to like them very well!!!!!!!!!!

Yeah you are correct. I used Sonic II hearing protection for one week while on the rifle team in college. Shooting a .22lr indoors. I averaged shooting roughly 500 rounds a week. I ended up with a 30% high frequency hearing loss in the left ear because of that. Now I use the highest NRR hearing protection that I can get, that still allows me to put my head on the stock. Unfortunately for shotgun shooting that means no earmuffs. For rifle shooting or handgun shooting I'll double up on the protection whenever possible - ear plugs AND muffs. I do have a custom set of "made in your ear" earplugs that I use for shotgun shooting, and they seem to work much better than any foam plugs that you buy.

The $200 per suppressor fee plus the $600 to $1,000 price tag per suppressor is a limiting factor for me as well. Plus I try to stay under the radar whenever possible.

You might be hearing more because of less background noise overcoming the sounds. I remember 9/11 when all air traffic was suspended. It seemed a LOT quieter outside, even tho I'm in the country. Even going to the big woods of Wisconsin, or off the beaten path out west. The further I get from roads the quieter it seems.

Dang, I hadn't realized it. No crickets this year. However, I'm considering selling my select breeder grasshoppers for $5 per 50 gallon barrel. Bring your own container and pick your own.

I'm seeing more rabbits this year and seeing and hearing less coyotes.

But nature always provides a balance. Next year more coyote pups will be born. When the rabbits get grazed down, less coyote pups will reach maturity.

These boom and bust wildlife cycles are why we manage our ponds. They are an ecosystem unto themselves and we try are darndest to keep them in balance.

BTW, coons seem to be adverse to the laws of nature.

Dave, we had all the coyotes run over on Hwy 19. In fact, twice in front of me, deer almost got hit while being chanced by one.

This spring, they were everywhere and howling all night. We haven't seen or heard one in several months now.

As a side note, hogs are nowhere to be found in my area.

I do have a hearing problem, ringing in my ears. So the crickets may be just a local problem here. What got me to checking for crickets is when I dress in the garage early mornings with clothes to keep the sketters off me while walking I thought I saw a cricket but it was just a spider. Then I realized there were no crickets jumping around in the garage like there used to be so I paid special attention as I walked in the dark listening for them. It could be a cycle but even in cycles there should be a few left. Thanks for the responses.

Plenty of immature crickets here. They may be delayed by the cold winter and spring. Also we have tons of small toads and frogs feasting on them. Definitely a bumper crop of amphibians this year!

When I used to fish with crickets I could always find them under rocks or wood, so I started lifting split logs on my fire wood piles and didn't find any. The same thing goes for grasshoppers.they used to be so thick I thought about putting a large net on the front bucket of my tractor and catching them for the fish. So what I see here is no crickets, grasshoppers and praying mantas. I did see three honey bees yesterday so that is encouraging.

The amphibians are really thick here also liquidsquid.

Dave, a buddy of mine that has property up close to SE OK came by this weekend, and said the same thing. He had 3 rifles he was sighting in for hog hunting, and had seen no hogs or sign of them this year.

He said he had been told that there was a virus going around,but he heard that second hand. I guess I'll have to plant a bacon tree in the garden next year.

Feral Hog Diseases

George,
I've tried and failed to get my Dad to wear a hearing aid but always fail. He says everyone talks "too fast and too low!"

I'll check into the device you suggest and "run it up the flagpole"

Al, I first noticed that a neighbor had the start of a decent sized johnson grass patch. Usually, hogs dig it up to get to the roots. Then I started checking with neighbors. They tell me the hogs seem to have left when the oil patch guys started doing some kind of sonic testing.

DJ, for years I was like your Dad. My Wife was hammering me full time to get the aids. Then I realized that I couldn't understand anything on TV. The problem is that everything is layered with background music. I got the aids($4,400) and they didn't help. Then the hearing aid guy gave me a device that I put on the table next to me. It eliminates the background junk.

I don't wear as often as I should. But then, I'm 71 and retired and don't wear them unless I go out in public. They're not perfect but are a lot better than the $4,400 that I had sitting in the bank drawing dang near no interest. I don't say Huh? near as often.

The doc asked why I thought I needed hearing aids. I told him that it was my Wifes idea. She has started mumbling a lot. Also, she will be in the kitchen and I'm on the PC about 40 ft away. She says something that I am supposed to hear and answer her. He said he couldn't help with that. Evidently his spouse does the same thing.

Its called selective hearing. All of us have it !

Five frogs on the sliding glass door, four on the front door. Mix of spring peepers and gray tree frogs! Not many cricket msounds yet, but after you brought this up I went looking. Lots of very small crickets and hoppers and locusts. I think the winter nuked the almost adults that can make it through on milder winters.
Itmhas been dang quiet at night here too, just a very few. Last year at this time it was deafening.

DD1,
A guy can't be expected to "hear" his wife every time she tells us something... It's in our marriage contract!

I really feel bad for my dad. He complains about now hearing normal conversations but, when I ask him about the hearing aids, he'll say something gruff like "I hear what I want to hear" but I know that is baloney. Perhaps it'll happen to me one day but I can't understand missing out on hearing your grandchildren and great-grandchildren. But, of source, selectively not hear your wife. hehe.

I was on the rifle team too. One protects their ears as best you can. I can still hear a squirrel climbing up the back side of a tree trunk. Mighty handy thing during hunting season.

We have frogs and birds galore around our place. A couple weeks ago, there was some kind of a fly hatch-out up the hill in the woods. It sounded like bees swarming. I went to investigate and as I approached the area, there were myriad different birds darting all about the trees and brush, snagging flies in flight or on leaves. I don't see many crickets, but a few mosquitos. I think nature has a complex and dynamic food-chain.