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Blog Entry 48 of 56 Outdoors in Wichita Falls

About the living things in and around Wichita Falls and those that enjoy them. What can be seen and where. Events and activities focused on this interest.

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Have a Grasshopper Safari

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Contributed by: Penny Miller on 6/28/2008

When I was a kid, my brothers, sister and I would spend a lot of time in the summer catching grasshoppers. They are really very interesting and colorful creatures.

If you have children and a know a place where grasshoppers are plentiful, give it a try. There are a stunning variety of vary colorful grasshoppers in the area (you see the color primarily on the wings and hind legs.) But instead of catch and release, please catch and bring to Wild Bird Rescue. We have hundreds of hungry mouths looking for food.

Normally in the summer we feed mealworms as the primary source of insect protein and supplement with whatever else we can. However, this year, there is a national shortage of mealworms. If we can get 5,000 in a week, we are doing well. Last week we were unable to find any available in the United States. We are in the season where we can feed 100,000 mealworms a week. We have also mooched as many as we can from others that grow their own--River Bend and WFISD. We have wiped them out.

We do raise some mealworms ourselves. Generally, we can keep enough on hand to handle any winter requirements and to hold us between shipments if we run out, we can't get a shipment for a few days due to the heat, and occasionally when we just plain don't have the money to buy enough. And we do have ways to stretch our supply. We have done it before, for all of the same reasons we grow some of our own.

How do we do this?
-- We try to raise and release birds a soon as we can. Aviary space is limited, so it limits how many we can move through. We have three aviaries now (versus one when I started), but we can still only mix certain kinds of birds and only the number that can safely be in an aviary at one time. We have received 600 birds so far this year, so there is a bit of a bottle neck there.
-- We move the older ones to a more varied diet, adding fruit and veggies, boiled eggs, more Science Diet cat food, more seed, etc. We are limited to some extent by the bird's natural diet. If they only eat insects, we can only feed insects. But if the birds eat insects as part of their diet, they get rationed and encouraged to eat a wider variety of food, just as they would in the wild when their preferred food source is scarce.
- We substitute other proteins. We use crickets, wax worms, earthworms (can be used only for robins) and wild caught insects. But each of these has their drawbacks. So they are a help but not a cure.

So, we could really use some grasshoppers (or crickets, or grubs). We are just beginning to get the birds that require large numbers of insects. Our first Western Kingbirds came this week. Kingbirds, Scissortails, Purple Martins, Chimney Swifts, and Swallows, all eat huge quanitities of insects, which is great when mom and dad are using your yard as a hunting ground. If you know any places with large quantities of grasshoppers, load them up and we'll happily take them. The only caution I have is please, do not gather them from areas that have been sprayed with insecticides--we don't want to poison the babies.

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Submitted By: Penny Miller

posted on 7/6/2008 @ 1:15:45 PM

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Thanks, Jim.

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Submitted By: Jim Miller

posted on 6/29/2008 @ 8:07:37 AM

Rated Blog Entry

One place that is pesticide-free is River Bend Nature Center, and hunting insects such as grasshoppers, leafhoppers and crickets is permitted along the trail. For those who would like to help out our friends at Wild Bird Rescue, leave your donations at the Field Guide Office in the Pavilion and I will see to it that they get to Wild Bird.

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Penny Miller

Wichita Falls , TX

Penny Miller has posted 56 blog entries and 45 comments since joining on 11/23/2006. Penny Miller 's average blog rating is 4.57.

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