A female Slightly Musical Conehead (Neoconocephalus exiliscanorus) rests on someone's heavily used field bag. Note her extremely long, sword-like ovipositor. It's not there to stab enemies. She uses it to inject eggs deep into plant tissue where, safely ensconced, they are safer from predators.

The group of katydids known as coneheads (long before Saturday Night Live came up with the skits of the same name) are charismatic, and mostly LOUD. While many of the orthopteran singing insects create quite pleasant songs (by rapidly scraping their wings together), melodious is not a word most would apply to many conehead species. Some of them sound like an electric line that has shorted and is loudly buzzing.

The mildly pejorative "slightly musical" in the case of this species is somewhat justified. While not as abrasive as some other conehead songs, it is not a song that one would put on the same plane as a Baltimore Oriole, or Rose-breasted Grosbeak. Nonetheless, it has a pleasant soft buzzing quality, albeit a tune that could easily be overlooked among the scads of singing insects in late summer and fall.

To hear a Slightly Musical Conehead for yourself, now, visit the Songs of Insects website, RIGHT HERE. This site, and the book that it is based off, are the works of Wil Hershberger and Lang Elliott, two of the most knowledgeable naturalists and best recordists of natural history sounds in North America. The accompanying video at the website linked above features a video of a singing male (only males sing) showing how it rubs its wings together (stridulates) to create its song.

I've been attempting to catch up with archival of images shot over the last year, and this conehead came from a trip to a wonderful new Arc of Appalachia acquisition in the Killbuck Valley region, in Holmes County, Ohio, aptly named Killbuck Swamp. A group of us visited there last August 8 to participate in a bio-blitz of the property. Scads of interesting organisms were found. Seeing the image of this conehead made me long for warmer days. We've gone through what - in modern times - has been a pretty frosty, snowy winter. But the days are getting longer, birds are increasingly singing, and it won't be long at all until the first Skunk-cabbage is blooming.