The flashlight seems to have no effect on him. The front wings are slightly apart, raised up a little, and vibrating ... a kind of fast, dry shuddering. The sound is a light “zzz,” ending with a rapid “tic-tic-tic.” This grasshopper is a waxy green. His antennae, almost twice as long as his body, go up in sweeping curves, and wave, sometimes both together in a semicircle, sometimes singly in both directions, as he stops his playing, and begins to move slightly down a twig. Then I notice a female moving in his direction. Had he increased the tempo of his playing when she came near? Did he sense success? Still harder to spot--almost impossible by day, and difficult enough at night--are the snowy tree crickets, but they are numerous in this low-treed, shrubby area. Where the long-horned grasshoppers sound at intervals, the combined chorus of snowy tree crickets pulses on. They are slender little creatures, a very pale, almost immaterial, green, but their fragile, transparent, membranous wings, raised higher than those of a long-horned when it plays, make a cry that rises up like peepers in the spring. This is the famous “temperature cricket” whose song speeds up or slows down in response to heat or cold. According to the field manuals, you can divide the number of notes per minute by four and then add forty, which will give you the approximate temperature in degrees Fahrenheit. So this great scraping and fiddling perpetuates a dance. The first frost will end the lives of most of these musicians. August’s high sounding means a coming end, but all of its connections and associations join in sending on the year. This is what the month means, as well as the hum of tourists driving down the Cape and back again. Listen to the chosen string. There is a miraculous sensitivity in the cricket that slows down when the temperature begins to cool at night, or even when a cloud passes over the sun by day. The male calls to attract the female, though it is apparently not known whether her arrival may not be the result of happenstance. His playing is as much a part of general expression as individual intention or reaction. In any case the eggs are laid, which will stay dormant throughout the winter, to hatch in the spring. The organic cycle continues, making an announcement, sending up a music whose players are so attuned to light and dark, sunlit or clouded skies, warm air or cold, day or night, that their existence depends upon the slightest change. _A Walk with an Oven Bird_