Customer Reviews

Field Guide to Grasshoppers, Katydids, and Crickets of the United States

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3 star:		(2)
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If you are interested in "the small things that make the world go round', this new field guide is a "keeper". Capinera, Scott, and Walker's user-friendly reference covers most of the common "orthops" in the US. That's about a third of the American grasshoppers, katydids, and crickets known in the lower 48. The book relies on 48 excellent color plates to aid identification. How do you use the book? Well, learning about grasshoppers and their kin is a little different from birding. You've got to have a specimen in hand, dead or alive. So, go check out your car's radiator grill for a grasshopper, or turn on the back porch lights to attract some katydids. Okay, with your dried grasshopper or a cricket in a jar you can begin by using the pictorial key. It will help you to learn what suborder and family your critter belongs to. After you do that a few times you'll be able to distinguish a spur-throated from a banded-wing hopper, or a cone-headed katydid from a hump-winged grig. When you reach this stage, which is a no-brainer, you use the book pretty much like a bird guide. Just compare your specimen with the plates. Wing and hind leg color are key characters for grasshoppers, while more subtle features distinguish katydids and crickets. When you find a good match, go to the species accounts to see if the critter occurs in your state. Don't be discouraged if it doesn't. Go back to the plates and keep looking. A lot of species look alike till you get up close and personal, which is the only way you are going to identify most orthops. It's amazing how quickly you can start to recognize species when you know their key characters. It's also quite satisfying. But very few of your hiking friends will believe you when you start spouting off the names of trailside orthops.

I hope that future editions will print the page number of the species account next to the species' picture in the plate. But you can always write the page in, as I do for those species I have identified. Did you ever wonder what makes those chirps and buzzing sounds on a summer night? Well, get out there with your flashlight and a jar and have some fun. There is a wealth of information in this field guide, and it can open up a new world of biological pursuit, whether you're a recreational naturalist or a professional entomologist.

This book sounds great when you read the description and when you get it, it looks like it will be another in the current wave of amazing field guides for previously obscure insect taxa exemplified by Ed Lam's 2004 Damselflies of the Northeast. When you try to use it, however, as I did on several recent occasions, you run into limitations. The keys are great to a point but I kept getting stuck at genus level or higher. Also, because you're often trying to identify a congener to the species illustrated, you have to "squint" a bit. Of course once you've had to do that once or twice you lose faith in the fine points of the illustrations even when you're pretty sure you're looking at the same species as illustrated. This book is great if you want to learn to separate the higher organization of the katydids, grasshoppers, and crickets and it is very useful for the information it provides on a particular species (habitat, life history, etc.) once you've got one identified, but for IDing a lot of grasshoppers to species, you'll need more.

Grasshoppers, crickets and kadydids are well-known, but often overlooked by amateur naturalists because of the apparent lack of good guides. Actually Helfer wrote a very good guide to the orthopteroid orders many years ago, which is still available from Dover, but the taxonomy is a bit out of date.

John Capinera et al., have now produced a beautiful guide a selection of the U. S. species to the true Orthoptera (minus walkingsticks, mantids, and cockroaches) that will serve as an good introduction. I am surprised at some of their choices, but then one never totally agrees with the authors of books containing selected species descriptions. Those who would like more can get Helfer, which is still very useful, if dated, and is much more complete (it not only includes most of the known grasshopper, katydid, and cricket species, but also the other orders formally placed in the Orthoptera, and the termites and earwigs as a bonus!). However the color illustrations in "Field Guide to Grasshoppers, Katydids, and Crickets of the United States" are reasonably accurate and beautiful. Why not get both books (the Helfer book is still available for less than $15.00) if you really want to identify your fauna of grasshoppers and their relatives?

I recommend this book to anyone interested in the fauna beyond their back door. I hope, however, that a revised and updated version of something like Helfer's book will eventually be published.

As a casual hobby naturalist, the thing that is hard to get used to with insects and insect field guides is that they are just so diverse. Any given guide, unless very regionally or family specific, can really only touch on what is out there. So even this guide, which only addresses 1 of the 30 orders of insects, has to focus on the common species plus illustrative members of other genera. I'm a birder, so my initial reaction is that this is like picking up a bird field guide and finding it only has American Robin as an example of "Thrushes".

Here is a case in point: we have Camel Crickets in our basement. So I thought "ah, I'll use this book to identify what kind of Camel Cricket". But there is only one Camel Cricket species described in detail in the book (not mine), and the family discussion notes that there are 150 species in 21 genera in the US and Canada. So just that one question could take up a whole field guide of its own.

Once your expectations are adjusted, the book does a great job of providing info on natural history, key features used to identify families/genera/species, and taxonomic navigation charts to help you quickly get to right place in the guide. That said, you need to become familiar enough with the differentiating features to be able to use this as a "field" guide. Like anything, it takes a little work to be able to efficiently use and enjoy this guide.

Have you tried to identify a grasshopper or cricket with one of those field guides that covers all insects? Here is the book that makes it possible to identify that orthopteran that you just can't find in the other guides. The pictorial keys and the full color plates are invaluable to amateurs and the experienced collectors alike. The distribution maps, descriptions and illustrations of distinguishing characteristics help you to confirm or refute your identification. This book is in such high demand by my students that I will certainly be buying more copies.

This Book is great for anyone, the beginner to the seasoned. It has helped me to identify nearly all the Grasshoppers, Katydids, And Crickets in my collection. Especially the more difficult meadow & conehead katydids and the spur-throated grasshoppers. This is a must have for any insect collector.

To add to the comments posted by others who have reviewed this book, here are a few additional notes. As mentioned by everyone above, the colour illustrations of a selection of species are beautiful. Descriptions of species are excellent. The description of habitat for each species (under heading of "Ecology") is quite helpful. As a Canadian naturalist, it's nice to find an insect guide that has range maps and descriptions extending north of the 49th. The section on natural history and anatomy is quite good, although it would have been nice to see more descriptions and illustrations of various nymphs as these seem to confound many people. Aside from that, it's an excellent field guide and would make a good addition to the library of any naturalist interested in entomology.

As an amateur naturalist I had wanted a small book to help in identifying these insects. The Insect field guides tend to not be specific enough. This book is a true field guide to this group of very common insects and has some beautiful colored illustrations as well as an excellent key.

A good addition to a library of detailed information about a common insect.This book follows after a general insect guide for anyone with curiosity about grasshoppers. Walk through arecently dry filed or lake and have this book in your pocket.

Easy to use, this book helped me find two of the three orthopterans I was seeking. The illustrations are wonderful and the text is understandable. My only disappointment, and it is not a large one, is that it does not contain all the insects in this diverse group---not that a book this size could do that! I use this book a lot in my work at a nature center, and visitors also find it straightforward and easy to use.