Why Do Crickets Chirp at Night?

You could hear the charming sound of crickets chirping in clear evenings or at night time. The question may arise, why these crickets chirp so much at night. A lot of us have been able to sleep intently as these crickets chirped through the nights. Crickets make so much noise at night also to avoid predators. You normally hear out their characteristic sound during early fall or late summers or maybe in spring. These crickets are nocturnal, which means they remain active at the nights when they chirp and sleep during the day. During the nighttime, crickets find food, make mating calls, and avoid predators such as bats that may kill them. 

What Sound Does a Cricket Make?

Crickets chirp for various reasons. 

• They employ chirping for mating calls, which may be for a variety of reasons or vary in quality from one another. The first call they might make could be to give out their location. The second call could be a mating ritual. The third one may be to keep the female cricket nearby or in range. Female crickets can distinguish between each of these calls. The high pitched and high-frequency calls belong to younger crickets, while the low pitch, low-frequency ones belong to adult crickets. 
• They also chirp at night to convey territorial imperative that the locality or area belongs to them and others must stay out. 
• These crickets chirp similar to a ventriloquist that may set out vibrations to warn their predators of their tribe and also distract them. However, the noise that they produce may sometimes attract parasitic flies such as Ormia ochracea that may enter inside the groove of their wings. 

It is not true that all crickets chirp. Only males chirp to attract females. They also use it to defend their territories in case of competition from other male crickets. This chirping sound comes about when they rub their forewings together. 

Male crickets produce several chirping sounds or types of songs which includes:

1. The calling song which they use to attract females and repel other males. It is comparatively loud.
2. The song for courting, which they make whenever a female is nearby to encourage her for mating with the caller.
3. The triumphal song, which they make after successfully mating, reinforces the mating bond and encourages females to lay eggs instead of going in search of other males.
4. The aggressive song that they sing or chirp when they detect another male cricket nearby or in the same location. 

Why Do the Crickets Chirp More in the Warm Weather?

Crickets chirp more during warm weather because it is easier for them to rub their wings together. When it is cold, it may not be so easy to do that. Therefore, they make more noise in warm weather. These crickets can easily tell when it is warm or cold; however, they can never make a forecast. Humans use cricket chirps to tell the temperature. In the late 1800s, Amos Dolbear found that by counting the number of chirps that crickets made simultaneously, one can tell the outside temperature within few degrees. 

Dolbear’s law suggests that to tell the outside temperature at any moment, count the number of cricket chirps at the given moment in 15 seconds and add 40 to it. The number you get can be close to the outside temperature at the given moment. 

What Temperature Do  the Crickets Stop Chirping?

The ideal temperature for any cricket to chirp is between 82 to 86 degrees F. Whenever the temperature of the habitat, where any cricket lives, falls below the room temperature, that is dips lower than 74 degrees F, their chirping slows down considerably and almost vanishes. Keep the cricket’s habitat in a somewhat cool corner, somewhere around the coolest part of the floor or basement area of your house. You can put up screen covers to reduce heat and humidity around the cricket’s habitat. 

How to Make the Crickets Stop Chirping?

Not all people enjoy the sound of crickets chirping when all they wish is to fall asleep. You may have spent many sleepless nights owing to these crickets chirping all through the nights. Therefore, we provide you with some tips that could help you to make these crickets stop chirping around your home.

You can follow some simple steps to keep crickets away from chirping around your place:

1. Clean up your garden or yard because crickets love to live amidst clutter. 
2. Use traps to hold them captive. These traps may contain fungi or fruits and need to be sticky so that when a cricket steps inside, it gets stuck.
3. Vinegar and salt sprays are harmful to crickets and can kill them.
4. These crickets dislike the smell of essential oils like most insects. 
5. Have cricket predators in your garden so they will stop chirping in your area.
6. Crickets are drawn to the lights in your home during the nights. Swap white lights with yellow lights, use light-blocking curtains, or simply switch the lights off.
7. The ideal temperature range for crickets is 82 to 86 degrees F. If you lower it below 74 degrees F, their chirping will slow down and vanish. 

Use white noise to drive away those chirping crickets that usually produce a calming effect due to every audible frequency being played at the same amplitude.