Short clattering noises rose from the scrub all around me as I walked along the sun-bright edge of Convict Lake, high in the Sierras a few weeks ago. The sound was somewhere between a rapidly whirled ratchet and thimbles and blunt sticks being rubbed over the rugose surface of an old-time washboard. What a racket!

I was being introduced to Blue-winged Grasshoppers on the make. It was mating season in the mountains, and these little creatures were doing their best to be noticed with short, noisy advertising flights announcing, “Here I am!” They didn’t get far off the ground, but then there was no need to do that. The noise itself was what mattered, and that came during these short flights, the thin membranes between the stout veins of their blue and black-banded hind wings snapping taut with each wingbeat.

These grasshoppers are pretty nondescript on the ground—not surprising since they have little defense against predators other than invisibility. The Blue-winged Grasshopper is one of the band-winged grasshoppers, a subfamily of grasshoppers in which its members share a characteristic hind wing color scheme, usually with a black band bordering a yellow or red splotch on the back portion of wing. The front part of the hind wing is usually clear. These hind wings, however, are kept hidden under the cryptically marked fore wings, which may themselves show distinct light or dark banding.

We do have band-winged grasshoppers here along the coast, and they will, at times, be heard as they fly off from virtually under your feet as you walk our hillside or parkland trails. As with so much wildlife, they see you long before you see them. But we don’t have blue-wings in the more coastal parts of the region. So you’ll have to dig grandma’s washboard out of the garage, put on a thimble or two, and make your own grasshopper chorus as you while away another glorious Southern California day wandering our sage-scrub-lined trails.