July is a good month for herbivores. The marsh vegetation is vigorous but not yet toughened and scorched by the heat. It is also tall and dense, with many nooks and crannies to hide and be invisible. Grasshoppers have chewing mouthparts, and love to munch on the threesquare (
Schoenoplectus pungens). Despite their relatively large size, the salt marsh grasshoppers are a wary bunch always preferring to keep a leaf blade between them and a potential danger jumping off or dropping to the ground at the slightest movement.
Salt marsh lacks large mammalian herbivores, there are no herds of buffalo or antelopes. Even grasshopper sized insects are not the plant eaters dominating
Spartina prairie. The main herbivores are tiny sapsuckers, leafhoppers and planthoppers swarming the grasses this time of the year. More on those later on.....
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