The Conehead that (Almost) Came to Dinner

One of the benefits of working on the farm is that we do get to observe all sorts of interesting things in the natural world.  Lately, we've seen lots of frog and toad activity.  There are some Garter snakes that we see once in a while and we will sometimes see fox snakes.  These are all critters we welcome on the farm in part because they do find some of the pests that cause us problems to be tasty.  Even if that were not the case, none of these animals do any harm to us or our crops, so we are happy to see them add to the diversity of what is around us as we work outside.

Our most recent encounter was with a katydid.  But, to be more accurate, we think this was a katydid that is called the Slightly Musical Conehead. 

Rob was harvesting lettuce and brought the tub in for soaking and he found this critter sitting on top as he unloaded the tub from the cart.  I do not suppose most of our CSA members would have enjoyed having it pop out at them when they went to put some nice lettuce on a sandwich.  It could also be disturbing to see it cleaning salad dressing off of its antennae while it is perched on a slice of cucumber sitting on your plate.

When we envision a katydid, this is actually usually what Tammy and I think of, though there are around 200 different types of katydids in North America.  It actually turns out that the call of the Oblong-winged Katydid is the sound the two of us associate with katydids.  We have plenty of audible evidence that that sort of katydid also inhabits our farm in some numbers.  In fact, we have heard several others on our farm as well.  If you are interested, you can go here to learn more about their calls.

After initially trying to get away from Rob, it calmed down and decided to put itself into a "I am a leaf or blade of grass" position.  It was actually pretty convincing.  When it came time to put it down, it didn't want to leave.  But, we eventually convinced it that there wouldn't be much for it to eat if it rode around on the tractor.

Tammy and I have to admit that we've always thought of katydids as a predator insect.  In fact, many tropical katydids are predators.  The coneheads in Iowa, however, are at best an omnivore, preferring to eat leaves and grasses.  They will eat aphids and they will eat dead insects - so we could just call them opportunistic.  On the other hand, they are not known to cause any sort of significant crop damage and they would prefer the grasses in the ditch to most anything we would grow. 

In the end, we'll accept any bonus aphid predation the coneheads and katydids can provide.  Even it isn't much, we still welcome them as another sign of ecological diversity on our farm.  Now, if we could get some praying mantids to thrive on our farm.  That would be something.