Are you seeing a lot of little mounds in your landscape that look like crawdad mounds or small ant hills? Or maybe the mounds look like worm castings to you. If so, then you probably have short tailed crickets.
The short tailed cricket feeds on grasses, weeds, pine cones and pine seedlings. Their damage to turfgrass is minimal since they barely feed on the grass blades. You may not see the little cricket since they do most of their feeding at night.
These crickets are very similar to the field crickets. The difference is the short ovipositor (egg laying organ on female) on the shorttailed cricket which is why they are named short tailed. They are light brown in color with a body length of about three-quarters of an inch. They shed the hindwings soon after becoming adults and never fly. The short tailed cricket nymphs are smaller than adults, light brown in color, and lack wings.
Short tailed crickets overwinter as a nymph in burrows made in the soil. After they molt several times in early spring, they reach the adult stage. Mated females begin to lay eggs in late spring or early summer. The adults construct multi-chambered burrows, and this is where the egg hatching takes place. For a short period of time, both eggs and nymphs may be found in the burrow. Then, between the fourth and sixth instars, nymphs leave the parent burrows and construct burrows of their own. At first the burrows are small, but as the crickets mature the burrows are enlarged. These burrows may reach depths of 12 to 20 inches. Only one cricket is found per burrow except when certain burrows contain eggs and nymphs. There is one generation per year.
In turf, burrows constructed by the nymphs and adults result in unsightly mounds of small soil pellets which may smother the surrounding grass. In Oklahoma, they are seldom noticed until the maturing nymphs begin to construct new burrows in the late summer. This is usually sometime in August and activity continues through October and, in some years, through most of November. These crickets may also be active in early spring as they emerge from hibernation. And they rebuild the burrows each time they are washed away by rain. Control of the short tailed cricket is seldom needed. However, if you have large numbers of mounds in your lawn, chemicals for white grubs and other soil insects could be used.
