I was struck by the dark body and bold striping on the grasshopper perched on a fading hibiscus flower. It was also a good opportunity to take a picture of one to compare antenna size relative to a katydid’s. The grasshopper’s feelers are not longer than its body, unlike the epicness of the Meadow Katydid’s antenna.

The grasshoppers are still gorging on my hibiscus, but they don’t take the entirety of each leaf, which leaves the plant at least some photosynthesizing capabilities. I shoo them off, but it doesn’t make much impact.

The antennae on this critter!! I have found these in my garden before, and had trouble photographing their sweeping feelers that seem to reach over three times their body length. I did not realize that they are a kind of katydid and that the immense antenna length is one of the distinguishing factors between Katydids and Grasshoppers. It matches the abelia bush nicely too, with its stem-colored stripe down the back.

Well, maybe not a requiem – more like an enthusiastic wake. That’s not quite right either. I held the vigil, and the chickens crazed. Hm. Feeding frenzy. There is the phrase. The katydid really didn’t have a chance, clinging to the inside of the hardware cloth of the run. My hens are sharp-eyed surveyors of their enclosure, and most bugs are quickly snapped up and devoured. Grasshoppery things rank the most delectable apparently because it was an all-out war over parts. Thank you for supplementing the hens’ diet, katydid.

I was tending the chickens when I saw a neighbor’s kitten watching something in the meadow. From a distance it looked like an ironclad beetle, so I had to go look. The kitten spooked, but the beetle didn’t. It wasn’t an ironclad beetle; it was larger, and yellow with black markings. As it struggled to climb up stalks (it was too heavy for the slim stems), I snapped a couple pictures. The iNaturalist app provided an ID: Harlequin Flower Beetle. This particular beetle was almost an inch long!