Does anybody know what this insect is?

This insect sounds like a cricket, but the sound is a continuous series of chirps, rather than individual chirps seperated by silence.
Here is a WAV sound of this insect as it was chirping last night (08-08-08, ~9:30pm PDT in Sacramento CA. USA).
This file is 143,978 bytes in length.
I am unable to find the actual insect; if I were able to, I would not need to ask here.

Any ideas?
It has a chirp unlike the chirp I've always associated with crickets.

Sounds like the infamous Starbucks Cricket. Or perhaps Jimminy Crack'it.

It's a cricket or a relative of the family (perhaps a katydid), as they all have the chirping ability. The chrips vary accordingly, and the same cricket will make chirps of differing tempo/duration depending on the ambient temperature.

uh oh I'm afraid that's the voice of the highly endangered and heavily protected screaming caterpillar, the EPA choppers are probably on their way to quarantine your place as I post. See to it that the bug stays healthy till the feds get there or you could be looking at jail time not to mention the fines..you shoulda seen what happened to Homer Simpson when he found one of those in his backyard!..

TedTheLed said:

uh oh I'm afraid that's the voice of the highly endangered and heavily protected screaming caterpillar, the EPA choppers are probably on their way to quarantine your place as I post. See to it that the bug stays healthy till the feds get there or you could be looking at jail time not to mention the fines..you shoulda seen what happened to Homer Simpson when he found one of those in his backyard!..

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haha!!!! good call.

It's a cricket but not as we know it, Captain.

Mind you, the crickets here don't just chirp once then shut up. They go "chirpchirpchirpchirpchirpchirpchirpchirpchirp... (etc)" and you really don't want to get one inside late at night.

Perhaps you could go hunting with a bright and very tight spotlight. When you're pointing the light in the right direction it'll probably be quiet.

Tree Cricket ?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGEnKh0ocb0

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_cricket


Normally, the "slow" ones I hear all the time are the black Field Crickets.

Craig I can say I never heard a cricket chirp that fast either although it certainly sounds like a cricket. Is it true or just a wives tale that crickets chirp faster in warmer weather and you can approximate the temperature by counting the number of cricket chirps in a given time frame?

geepondy said:

Is it true or just a wives tale that crickets chirp faster in warmer weather and you can approximate the temperature by counting the number of cricket chirps in a given time frame?

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Sounds like a job for Mythbusters!

Pretty sure it's the larval stage of the South Texas Chupacabra. Didn't realize they had made it all the way to NorCal.......

Probably should bring your goats inside.

(Actually, my money's on the katydid).

geepondy said:

...Is it true or just a wives tale that crickets chirp faster in warmer weather and you can approximate the temperature by counting the number of cricket chirps in a given time frame?

Click to expand...

As a former entomologist (one who studies insects), I believe that this is absolutely, positively, 100% true.
There is a very simple formula for determining the temperature by counting the number of chirps in a certain (relatively brief) time interval, then applying a simple mathematical formula (possibly as simple as a bit of addition) to that number.
The result is supposedly quite accurate - to within a degree or two Farenheit anyway.

There's a small frog that has invaded Hawaii (at least Kauai) that sounds exactly - and I mean exactly like the crickets here in SoCal. They are deafening and spoil what was once a beautiful, distant bull frog call that I loved.