Heathland, West Sussex: Male insects raise and rub their forewings on warm, early summer evenings to produce a soothing love song
Finally, it is a still, warm evening. I follow the footpath across the soft, grey sand of the heathland. Scattered trees glisten and a square of rape on the South Downs glows bright yellow in the sun. This is just one of a number of patches of heath in the shadow of the downs and for one insect the most important. The air all around is thick – almost oppressive – with the high-pitched chirruping of the field cricket.
By 1988 it was believed that just 100 of these insects remained in Britain, and they were on this one small area of heathland. The decline had been caused by the fragmentation and disappearance of light chalky or sandy heaths with the short, grazed grass preferred by the field crickets. Today, through breeding and translocation programmes, this colony is providing crickets for reintroductions at suitable habitats elsewhere in Sussex and Surrey. Looking closely at the ground, among the uncurling ferns and low, cropped heather, I find the round entrances to the crickets' burrows in the sandy soil.
The pioneering nature writer Gilbert White described the field cricket in one of his letters of 1779, remarking on its shy and retiring nature. Sure enough, finding one proves difficult. As I home in carefully on the source of one chirrup, the cricket senses the vibrations of my approaching footsteps and scurries down into its burrow. Then I find one, a male, sitting still, sunbathing in the grass. It is about 20mm long and black, with a large, round head. The small forewings – the field cricket has only vestigial hind wings and cannot fly – have a golden-brown band at their base. The wings and abdomen are intricately patterned, resembling tiny beaten bronze panels. The male insect raises and rubs these wings on warm, early summer evenings, to produce its soothing love song. I leave the crickets to their trilling., thinking of Gilbert White's description: 'Thus the shrilling of the field-cricket, though sharp and stridulous, yet marvellously delights some hearers, filling their minds with a train of summer ideas of every thing that is rural, verdurous, and joyous."