Before the Meadow Goes Quiet

Before the Meadow Goes Quiet by Marlene McTigue

When Old-School Naturalist began back in March, we started by noticing the small signs that winter was giving way to spring. Remember that first salamander crossing the road? And here we are, six months later, as the great wheel turns again.

In recent weeks, our column has expanded into five more newspapers, so welcome to those of you who are just joining us. You can catch up on all the places we’ve been and things we’ve noticed along the way at Old-SchoolNaturalist.com, if you so desire. Whether you’ve been here since March or have only just begun to read, you’ve arrived at a lovely moment.

Summer is beginning its slow turn to autumn. Here on the hill, goldenrod has begun to bloom. Purple knapweed blooms spread among the grasses, as thousands of male field crickets hidden among them add their voices to one grand late-summer chorus. And here was a surprise, at least to me: crickets have wings.

I have encountered plenty of crickets over the years, particularly the occasional fellow who found his way into the house, and I don’t remember ever seeing one with wings. Apparently, I was looking right at them.

The forewings of an adult field cricket lie folded over its back, so neatly incorporated into that familiar cricket shape that I had never thought of them as wings at all. And those are the very wings responsible for the sound.

Male crickets don’t chirp by rubbing their legs together, as I had somehow believed since childhood. They rub specialized structures on their forewings together. It’s called stridulation. And the songs have purpose: a loud calling song to attract a female, a quieter courtship song when she draws near, and another for encounters between males.

What sounds from a distance like one continuous wall of sound is, down among the grasses, courtship and competition, invitation and warning.

Crickets are ectotherms, their body temperatures governed largely by the world around them. Their songs quicken with warmth and slow as the air cools.

As August wanes and nighttime temperatures fall, cool nights and mornings quiet the chorus. Then the afternoon sun warms the meadow and the singers strike up again, weaving that great tapestry of sound we hear all around us.

Late August has become audible.

But sound is not the season’s only calling card.

Emerging from the forest into the meadow this week, we walked into a wall of sweetness. The scent seemed almost tangible, rising from wildflowers and sun-warmed grasses, ripening vegetation and earth, all mingling into something instantly familiar, though impossible to name. It smelled like the full fecundity of late August. And beneath it all, the crickets sang.

Humans have been charmed by cricket song for centuries. In ancient China, crickets were treasured for their songs and came to symbolize good fortune. Across Europe, they found their way into folklore as lucky companions of the household.

Charles Dickens took that old affection a step further in his 1845 novella, The Cricket on the Hearth, imagining the cricket as the “Genius of his Hearth and Home,” a tiny guardian of domestic happiness.

Yet the cricket song of late summer carries another meaning.They are racing the season. Field crickets grow toward adulthood by shedding their old exoskeletons again and again. With each molt they emerge a little larger, until finally the wings appear and the males can add their voices to the chorus.

By late summer, they have reached the stage all that growing was leading toward. The males sing. Females listen and choose. They mate, and the females tuck their eggs into the soil. Then autumn comes. Those eggs are the future, hidden beneath our feet through winter, waiting for warmth to begin the cycle again.

The adults will not.

As the days shorten and temperatures fall, their songs will slow. Warm September afternoons may still bring the chorus back in force, but gradually the great chorus of late summer will fade.

There will be no announcement when it happens.

One evening there will simply be fewer voices. Then fewer still. Until one day we step outside and realize the meadow has gone quiet.

Perhaps noticing that moment is one of the unexpected rewards of becoming an Old-School Naturalist.

Summer here passes quickly. There is nothing we can do to change that. But when we have paid attention to it day after day, it becomes harder to say we don’t know where it went.

The Old-School Naturalist knows where it went. We were there for it. We watched the first green return and the meadows grow tall. We saw the fireflies rise and the fledglings leave their nests. We watched August turn gold. And now we’re here for this, too: Queen Anne’s lace curling into little bird’s nests, the sweet fecundity of the meadow, and thousands of crickets singing summer toward its close.

Perhaps paying attention cannot make a season last any longer. But it can make a short season feel full.

So sometime this week, step outside and listen. The crickets are still singing.

For now.

We’ll see you next week. There is still so much out there for us to notice together.