Florida is filled with many amazing creatures and plants, and that’s one of my favorite reasons to live here (that and NO snow!). On any given day or evening if you go outdoors you never know what you might see. On pretty evening in May I went outside to get one of my dogs who was on the porch. I opened the door, and when I closed it, I was startled to see a brownish green grasshopper type insect clinging to the outside of the door. It’s unusual to see grasshoppers out and active at night, plus, Florida has quite a few types of grasshopper, so of course, I had to check it out.

Like a grasshopper it had, large, strong rear legs for jumping, but it had longer antennas than most grasshoppers, and it had much smaller eyes. I guessed it to be some type of cricket, but I wasn’t sure, and besides it was pretty cool looking, so I had to grab my camera on catch a few shots. Once I got a couple pictures I put it into my insect identification app, and it came up as an Alpine cricket. I found that a little hard to believe, since they are found in Central and Eastern Europe in and around the Alps! These apps are only as good as the information you feed them, so I tried a couple more photos, and this time I got a better response. The bug on my door was a brown katydid.

That made a lot more sense to me. Katydids are closely related to grasshoppers and crickets, and like their cricket cousins they are nocturnal. There are several types of brown katydids, but they are found here in central Florida (not Central Europe!). Katydids eat mostly plant leaves and the small insects that live on those leaves, and they tend to live in scrub oaks, palmettos, shrubs, and other bushes. My porch has a row of trees right in front of it, so that also made a lot of sense.

Katydids are probably best known for their nighttime “singing”, and a lot of folks confuse katydids and cicadas and their “songs”. We have both around here, so you have to listen carefully sometimes to tell which type of insect you’re listening to. Katydids are named for their song and it is kind of a musical “katy dee id” whereas cicadas make more of a clicking sound. I know some people find the noise annoying, but I find it very peaceful. Katydids occur all over the world, so the next time you go outdoors at night see if you hear some katydids singing.