Cricket, lovely Cricket.....

3 Aug 2017

Well, not the Calypso Caribbean Test Match variety, but a quite remarkable, amazing bug that we have in abundance at Dovestone – The Common Water Cricket, with a lovely Latin name too - Velia caprai.

There are 4 other UK Crickets or Lesser Water Crickets, but this is the most frequently seen.

They are a good indicator of clean water – they cannot live in any that has pollution.

Water Crickets live in the quiet, calm pools of even fast flowing small streams and pathside ditches (if there is a little bit of moving water) - but not in standing or stagnant water – or where dogs often run in – its too much disturbance.

Very nearly all small bits of water like that, up to around 1300ft height at Dovestone will have these animals if you look closely. I haven't spotted them yet on the Bog tops.......so keep an eye out up there!

Many folk mistake them for other water bugs which also live on the surface, such as pond skaters – its worth getting close to check any you see.

They feed by ambushing small dead or alive insects which are floating along on the water current – they wait for anything suitable and attack when close enough.
If the prey tries to get away, the Cricket can eject a type of spit from its mouth , which lowers the surface tension in front of it and enables the Cricket to travel at twice its normal speed and hunt down the food better.
They use their legs all at once, like a 3-man rowing boat as the main form of thrust to attack, but they can also be slow and careful to take food by surprise – they show some pretty clever adaptations!
If they take prey that is too big for one, others will join in to feed – a form of cleptoparisitism.
They have piercing and sucking mouth parts like all True Bugs, Hemiptera do.
Females are larger than males – they go up to about 1 cm in body length.
Like many insects and frogs, Water Crickets go through changes called metamorphosis as they grow – each different change is called an instar – and the have up to 5 of these as they get older and bigger.
The eggs are laid on plants and moss around May and it takes a year to develop fully into adulthood.
They have a number of young and the adults look after them in a sort of crèche – you can often find only one or two strongly orange marked adults with a dozen plain black youngsters.
There may be 3 generations a year – they are quite successful insects - and so youngsters eventually need to move away to colonise other nearby water.
Some develop wings and can fly, but they also colonise new places by crawling through grass, to even as far as 30 metres away, to find a new home.
Predators – Dippers and Grey Wagtails I should think, maybe Dragonfly larvae too - but they are distasteful to Brown Trout, so all in all, they have a pretty good life.
You can find them even in a cold winter, but are most easily spotted in late summer.

Try and catch an adult and have a look at the beautiful twin orange markings on the back – but put it back carefully – it might be looking after some youngsters!