While I waited, reading a book, to pick up my son after school today, a bright green katydid fluttered down on crêpe-paper wings and landed on my head. A few minutes later a second one flew over my head and fluttered into the street. I walked out into the street to retrieve it, and brought them both home with me in a plastic lunch container I borrowed from one of the students.
Katydids have much longer antennae than grasshoppers, which is one easy way to identify them. They also have four segments in their tarsi (the “ankle” section of their legs), whereas crickets have three segments.
But other than that, I’m not able to specify what species of katydid these two are. Could be Microcentrum rhombifolium, or perhaps Scudderia mexicana or a related species.
Steven E. F. Brown 