Any more input on the current grasshopper issue in Yuma, PHX, TUC, PP or anywhere in between?
Anyone recall the seventh of the ten plagues upon Egypt (Exocus 10:4-5)?
The locusts (actually grasshoppers) devoured everything to include the trees................if you still believe in fairy tales.
Well there is a quite large short-horned grasshopper known as the the Giant Gray Birdwing Grasshopper: Schistocerca nitens, that occurs as a fairly common resident at times throughout our deserts. They live in the open desert and in towns, you can't mistake the large nymphs as they are bright green and feed on your garden plants. When they do their final moult to adulthood the males are around two inches long and the females get up to four inches long, They are strong long distance fliers and with the help of favorable winds can travel many miles especially at night.
They have been ending up in my pool almost daily for more than a month, crash into my brightly lit hot tub every night and are out flying in the local desert every time we go out. I saw hundreds in the air between PP and Yuma last month, hundreds more out in the desert on our Pronghorn search last month.
When their numbers begin to increase as they have been they become "An Omen" of things to come, as in a "Biblical Plague". Their close relative Schistocerca gregaria is the critter quoted in the Bible as the plague locust. Our local version has not been responsible for any recent destruction but has done it in the past.
JJ