There's a continuous whirring noise as I walk through a wide grassy margin at the side of a local arable field. It sounds a little like electrical interference, like when you walk under a pylon and you can sometimes hear a buzzing noise overhead. Except there are no pylons or power lines. I stop. I listen. I move towards the sound. It stops. I stop. It starts. I move towards it. It stops. I stop. It starts. This goes on for some time until eventually I spy a movement and there, amongst the grasses, is a Roesel's bush-cricket.

The song of crickets and grasshoppers is called stridulation and is created by the rubbing together of wings in crickets and a hind leg and a wing in grasshoppers. If you can imagine playing a washboard - strumming a series of pegs or corrugations with a scraper - you've pretty much worked out how they make the noise. Just like birds, each species has a different song and some sing louder than others. Compare the Roesel's continual whirring above with that of a meadow grasshopper below, for example...

It's usually males who sing loudest because, you've guessed it, song is used as part of courtship. Again, just like birds, they have different songs for different moments. If I'd have been more tuned in to the language of the Roesel's bush-cricket that I was watching, I'd have known whether there was a female or a male nearby without having to look. A song to woo a female is different when she's alone compared to when the male is competing with other males who are also serenading her. Some crickets and grasshoppers even combine their song with some dancefloor moves.