Customer Reviews

The Songs of Insects

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I just received a copy of Lang Elliot and Wil Hershberger's book, The Songs of Insects and just wanted to say what a fabulous addition this will be to any local naturalist's collection of guides.

I used to work a lot on this group in the late 1990's, testing monitoring protocols primarily for the katydid groups. I grew to appreciate how one could identify almost all of the species just by their calls. Unfortunately, I couldn't get much interest to continue that work and so instead now work on native bee monitoring techniques...something that people have more awareness of.

I think this book should move crickets, katydids, and cicadas into the same realm butterflies and dragonflies now inhabit for many naturalists. Now non-professionals will have great access to information and calls of these insects though this book and the associated CD. Furthermore this is complemented by accessing the information on Tom Walker's web site in Gainesville, FL for all the species in North America, complete with their songs and calls. Consequently, it would be great to see people organize the collection of distribution and abundance information of these species within North America similar to efforts for dragonflies and butterflies.

The pictures are the best I have seen and the recordings are of the highest quality....this is a book that will greatly change how any of you listen and look at these critters. ... .I can't say enough.

Sam Droege

Each new book Lang Elliott produces is a leap and a bound more wonderful than the last excellent one. A prolific sound-recordist and photographer, Elliott--along with co-author Wil Hershberger--knows how to communicate knowledge and information in a way that draws the reader in, opening eyes, ears and sense of wonder to the natural world. What a fabulous addition to my natural history library!

Very well written and vocabulary is a level children and adults
understand and enjoy. Photography is amazing.
CD sound track also amazing, some of them I had never heard their
songs before.
Very good educational tool and enjoyable for children and adults.

As other reviewers have stated, this is a remarkable resource for insect identification. I would like to comment on the quality of the images. I found that a remarkable effort and attention to detail that went into these images. In far too many books the conversion of images from digital to print looks like the author doesn't know or doesn't care how his images look. For Lang Elliott this was not the case. He meticulously ensured that the printed images have remarkable depth of field and colors. I found any number of them to be remarkable pieces of photographic art. I felt guilty for only paying $13.57 for this book.

I heard an interview on Chicago NPR with the authors of this book and CD compilation on the songs of insects. I was curious and followed the links to amazon.
Having been a long-standing amateur student of ornithology I was immediately motivated by the genius of the idea of a guide to insect songs. I bought the book/cd, and I think if you buy it too, you'll be very happy with the work. It is interesting and unique and a great way to open up areas of the brain that lie dormant beneath the contemporary condition.

"The Songs of Insects" has opened up a world of insect sound to me. Six-legged singers are often hard to spot visually and therefore difficult to identify. This book provides a solution. A large number of species of insect singers are covered and for each there is a beautiful photograph, a range map and description as well as a good sound track and sonogram. Both noctural and diurnal species are included. I highly recommend this book

A splendid book. A labor of love long in the making. Even if you don't hear the songs, the photos are unique. These splendid animals walk right out of the page into your life. I suggest you try this book with preschoolers. It's possible, given the great beauty, especially of the katydids, that this would be a way of overcoming some of our resistance to fully embracing insects as kin and friends.

At the start of the attraction, Pirates of the Caribbean, at Disneyland in California, you board a boat that takes you through a replica of Midwestern river dock at dusk. The most realistic part of that ride that gets you into the mood to shift focus away from the mob scene outside onto the scenes about to be revealed within is the sound of a cricket. If I think about that ride, I can hear that cricket.

Whenever I hear insect sounds at dusk and in the evening, I always wonder what kind of insect is making the sounds. That's something I've wondered since I was a small boy. Until now, I had few clues except for the occasional cricket I had observed while singing. But regardless of where I am, those sounds help me relax and become more peaceful.

With The Songs of Insects, I've added exponentially to my ability to relax, identify insects, and explore new dimensions of the insect songs. I was very impressed with the combination of CD and book. I started by listening to the CD because I was so interested in hearing new songs and knowing which insect made which song. I noted down the familiar sounds of my neighborhood in the woods and was astounded to see that we have katydids in our area. Checking the maps in the books, I was pleased to see confirmation that it was reasonable to expect those katydids in our area.

Next, I dived into reading about the katydids, crickets, and cicadas that I had heard before. But it was hard to take my eyes off the stunning photographs of those insects, displayed both against a white and a natural background.

After that, I went back and read the whole book and found myself intrigued by the opportunity to keep crickets as pets to bring the singing indoors. I was pleasantly surprised to see the graphic representations of the songs in the book as sonagrams in terms of time and pitch. I was also interested to read how much we lose our ability to hear in the upper ranges of insects: That explained why I couldn't hear anything in six places on the CD. Oops! No wonder people think I'm getting hard of hearing. But at least I could see what I am missing.

Later, as dusk fell, I found that the chorus outdoors became more distinct in my mind. I'm sure it's always as loud as it was last night, but I normally don't notice it. I'm grateful for this book and CD bringing my local symphony into greater awareness.

The CD also has samples from a CD entitled Insect Concertos. Based on these samples, I highly recommend the idea of acquiring that CD as an invitation into relaxation whenever you need one.

I highly recommend you acquire this book and CD if you have any interest in insect song, insect identification, or relaxation.

I heard about this book on NPR one day in late May, and ordered it for my daughter's birthday the very next day. She couldn't be happier with it and says the book is excellent, the photos are exquisite, and the CD of insect songs is fantastic. (Truthfully, the CD is what sold me on getting this for her.)

I have long wanted to know what insects I am hearing every summer and now have a chance of knowing which ones they are. The imagery is fantastic. The range maps will be a blessing to my students as they try to determine what type of katydid or cicada and so on they have nabbed for their bug collection.

The audio CD is great too! The only drawback there is that the holding compartment in the back of the book is poor. Right after I got this book I was taking it to school and the brand new CD fell out of the pouch and onto the pavement. Now its scratched and I don't know what to do. I usually make a backup of all my CDs right away but failed to do so with this one!

This book came to my attention when I wrote in my blog about the microphone I positioned in my backyard. I use it to listen to crickets and lots of other creatures out back, sometimes all night long.