New friend

[beeper]

New friend in the rose garden...

 

[Carol Dee]

A katydid ? Cool insect

 

[beeper]

A katydid ? Cool insect

I have only seen them in pictures, first time to see a real one, I love it.

 

[baymule]

You ought to post that for picture of the week!

 

[Beekissed]

I have only seen them in pictures, first time to see a real one, I love it.

My cats love to eat them. Can't believe this is your first! Pretty, aren't they? I agree with Bay...should enter that as the POW.

 

[so lucky]

@beeper, do you think katydids have been in California for years, and you just haven't seen them? I read that they will eat crop plants. I hope this isn't the start of a new pest invasion for SoCal.
But, yeah, yours is pretty cute.

 

[digitS']

Hmmm

http://entomology.ifas.ufl.edu/walker/buzz/141m.htm

 

[ninnymary]

I've never seen one up here.

Mary

 

[thistlebloom]

I met my first Katydid when I was in second grade. It was in one of our fruit trees.
Actually there were more than one, so I pounded holes in a jar lid with a nail and captured them for observation. I was horrified the next day that there was only one left in the jar. They are apparently like Mantids and will eat whatever they can catch. This was in southern CA.

 

[Ridgerunner]

From Wikipedia

Insects in the family Tettigoniidae are commonly called bush crickets[2] (in the British Isles), katydids (in the USA), or long-horned grasshoppers (obsolete). More than 6,400 species are known.

They are supposedly on all continents except Antarctica. Some only eat vegetation some are hunters and predators. Again a common name might describe different critters to different people. Growing up in the Tennessee Appalachian ridges I occasionally saw some but not that many.