Crickets chirp away merrily by rubbing their rough wings together.

The cheerful songs that crickets chirp have inspired the popular expression “as merry as a cricket.”  Actually, a cricket doesn’t “sing.”  A cricket fiddles its chirping note by rubbing its wings together.

The wing edges are rough where they overlap.  The chirping noise is produced by rubbing the rough edges briskly together.  In this manner, the boy cricket fiddles courtship songs to a girl cricket.

His chirps also serve to warn away enemies.  Crickets have keen ears, which are located on their legs instead of their heads.

The little pale-green tree cricket has the clearest and most musical notes of all.  It lives high in trees and bushes, and is sometimes called a “thermometer cricket” because of its ability to report the temperature.  It chirps faster as the temperature rises.

If you live where there are crickets, you can find the temperature by counting the member of chirps a cricket makes in 15 seconds and adding 39 to the number. – Dick Rogers