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Excerpts from Jim Conrad's
Naturalist Newsletter
from the July 28, 2008 Newsletter, issued from the forest near Natchez, Mississippi; elevation ~400ft (120m), ~N31.47°, ~W91.29°:
RED-HEADED BUSH CRICKETS
If your computer can handle the audio files at SongsOfInsects.Com, and you live in the eastern US south of Chicago and New York, but not in southern Florida, you may be able to hear the call of the Red-headed Bush Cricket, or Handsome Trig one of the most typical insect calls emanating from unsprayed bushes and trees during the summer. However, if you try sneaking up on the caller it's almost guaranteed that it'll grow silent before you see anything, though other calls like it will continue, as persistent as the sounds of waves crashing at the beach.
The call is made by a bush cricket, PHYLLOPALPUS PULCHELLUS, sometimes known as the Red-headed Bush Cricket, Handsome Trig and other names. The one photographed above was spotted by chance, which is usually the way you see them, while exploring dense hedgerow vegetation looking for something else.
Though many web pages provide breakdowns of this insect's classification, it's hard to find such basic information on the species' life cycle, what it eats, when it starts singing, etc. This should encourage us all to put onto the web our nature observations, especially about lesser known species, so that anyone using a search engine well can eventually find it.
For my part, here and now I contribute to the body of knowledge about Phyllopalpus pulchellus that in southwestern Mississippi in late July you can find the critter in bushes, but they don't seem to be singing just yet. Maybe it's a bit early for them, or maybe my growing deafness is worse than I imagine.