Grasshoppers like long grass – they don’t like lawnmowers! 

The buzzing and chirping sounds of grasshoppers is one of the classic sounds late summer.  That is when they are fully grown and ‘talk’ to each other by rubbing their legs against their body stridulating.  From spring onwards, tiny grasshoppers chew on grasses and other herbage, growing bigger through a series of moults, when they shed their skin.  Not all grasshoppers can escape mowers and many are killed or damaged by the blades, so grass left uncut for the summer or longer is good for them.

Grasshoppers have short antennae (feelers), but in denser vegetation there may be bush-crickets, which have antennae much longer than their bodies.  They all make quite high-pitched noises that older people find hard to hear.