Why don’t we hear crickets at night in the UK?

36 comments

1. Depends where you live. Where I live they definitely do chirp at night lol

2. I have memories of hearing crickets here. Must be at least 20 years ago though during a very hot summer.

3. They are there, there’s a project that uses bat recorder tapes to harvest distribution data for crickets using an AI program to ID the calls to species. I suspect it’s noise pollution that’s stopping you hearing them where you are.

4. Dead Jim

5. Because we’re all hilarious so they were out of a job

6. We don’t have them where I am. They don’t live this far North.

7. The UK has one of the coldest _summer_ climates of any majorly populated place in the world. So there’s not many places you won’t hear them in summer, but we’re one of them.

8. We have them, there just isn’t many of them. Most of the time they’re drowned out by background noise, but I always notice them when I’m bored out my mind waiting for a bus.

9. Because I put them all on mute mode , you’re welcome, OP..lol

10. Our crickets are gentlemanly and do not wish to awake their neighbours.

11. Don’t have them up north.

12. I’d prefer to hear cicadas at night.

13. Because they heard that loads of us own cricket bats so they got scared

14. I’ve heard them during the day in parts of UK but never at night.

15. It’s not crickets you hear abroad, it’s cicadas who don’t really live in the UK- the only ones who do, live in a small area and are endangered

16. Hello, I’m a tarantula hobbyist, and I keep and breed field crickets and black crickets as feeders. The temp range alone for cricket eggs to hatch is 25°C-30°C. In the south of England during the summer, this may occasionally be the case.

    I suspect the further north you travel in the UK, the less likely these conditions are found. The chirping you hear are male crickets stridulating to attract the females. If there is no breeding potential, there is no courtship and therefore no chirping. I hope this helps.

17. You don’t hear them anywhere in Northern Europe, they’re a hot country thing

18. They still think there’s a war on and don’t want to give away their location by making noise

19. Because all the village greens where matches once took place have been turned into housing estates.

20. Was just listening to them last night.

    They are around, and pretty common, but only in warmer areas with plenty of scrub and wild grasses.

21. There are lots of crickets, you’re probably just not next to long grasses? There’s a field outside my work that is absolutely infested with crickets because they let the grass grow long. They can be heard in most of the countryside too. I’m also very far north near the sea.

22. I hear them in the day by one of my parks. West Midlands

23. Because the Australian’s cheat (sorry, that’s an Ashes joke, I’ll stop now)

24. You can hear grasshoppers during the day, but they’re quite subtle. Just like a rustle click. I dont know crickets are really a thing in UK

25. The sound of crickets was a sleeping sound soundtrack of my childhood. I miss it dearly.

26. What you hear in other, hotter, countries are probably cicadas, much louder than crickets. We don’t have those in the UK – too cool for them (so far!)

    One can hear ordinary crickets on a warm day, but much much less common than they used to be. We have lost circa 70% of our insect populations! Somewhere with nice undisturbed natural long grass.

27. Most insects are gone now, the UK is a wildlife desert.

28. Go onto the moors. You’ll hear them.

29. Our crickets have the best manners.

30. I have dozens of crickets in my front garden, just walk through the grass and see the stampede of crickets leaping out of the way. They don’t make a sound, but then they only need crawl a cm and bump into another cricket. No point in loudly telling predators where you are if your mate is next to you I presume

31. We play our cricket during the day, easier to see the ball

32. I’m in South Wales and you hear them in the long grass. I have them in my garden. It’s lovely on a warm night.

33. Do you live near the long grass ??
    I do I hear them

34. I do when it’s warm enough, but I live in the middle of a massive organic farm co-op, lots of places use pesticides, so the eco systems are collapsed .

35. We have a bush cricket population in our mature Beech hedge here in the North of East Sussex. They tend to emerge in July and sing at night through to September.

    You need to have the correct habitat for them which includes plenty of leaf litter and dead wood within the hedge structure.

36. About forty years ago, I heard a cicada in a pile of hardwood that my uncle had bought for some project or other. I don’t know where the wood was from, but I suspect it was from somewhere hot and the cicada was a stowaway. Never heard one before or since.