Katydid on Common Tansy

This is the first photo I've posted from 31 August 2016, when I paid a quick visit to a couple of places in Fish Creek Park. I don't remember too much about it, except that I had picked up my new car just two days earlier and I was concentrating really hard on driving it : )

My first stop was at Burnsmead, as I wanted to check yet again to see if there were any mushrooms - a few years ago, I had photographed several amazing ones, including Stinkhorns and Bird's nest fungi. Since then, I haven't really seen any mushrooms there. A quick walk around the storm-water ponds found me this Katydid (?) on a Common Tansy plant. I think I have only ever once seen a Katydid and, now that I think about it, that, too, had been found at Burnsmead.

Though Common Tansy (Tanacetum vulgare) is a noxious weed that grows in our natural areas, I still like coming across it, with its beautiful bright yellow, button-like flowers.

"Introduced from Europe in the 1600’s, its pungently aromatic foliage has been used medicinally, as an insect repellant, and for embalming. Common tansy forms dense stands and the plants contain alkaloids that are toxic to both humans and livestock if consumed in large quantities. Cases of livestock poisoning are rare, though, because tansy is unpalatable to grazing animals. Because of its long medicinal and horticultural use, Common tansy is still available in plant nurseries and from herbal remedy suppliers. Gardeners should not purchase Common tansy."

"The family Tettigoniidae, known in American English as katydids and in British English as bush-crickets, contains more than 6,400 species. It is part of the suborder Ensifera and the only family in the superfamily Tettigonoidea. They are also known as long-horned grasshoppers, although they are more closely related to crickets than to grasshoppers.

Tettigoniids may be distinguished from grasshoppers by the length of their antennae, which may exceed their own body length, while in grasshoppers are always relatively short.

The name "katydid" comes from the sound produced by species of the North American genus Pterophylla (literally "winged leaf"). The males of katydids have sound-producing organs (via stridulation) located on the hind angles of their front wings, which in some species produce a sound thought to resemble the words "Katy did, Katy didn't", hence the name. In some species females are also capable of stridulation.

There are about 255 species in North America, but the majority of species live in the tropical regions of the world.

The diet of tettigoniids includes leaves, flowers, bark, and seeds, but many species are exclusively predatory, feeding on other insects, snails or even small vertebrates such as snakes and lizards. Some are also considered pests by commercial crop growers and are sprayed to limit growth." From Wikipedia.

Birds seen included a Double-crested Cormorant, Coots, Mallrds, a Clay-coloured Sparrow, and a Pied-billed Grebe. A short while later, I called in at Sikome for a few minutes, just long enough to photograph a row of about eight Mallards resting on a log in the creek. Felt kind of sorry for the males who were in eclipse mode, so had brown heads instead of their gorgeous, iridescent green/purple.