Chinch Bug

The adult Chinch Bug is about 4 mm long and black with opaque wings. The wings may be as long as the body or 1/3 to 1/2 the length of the body. Eggs are 0.84 x 0.30 mm and flattened at one end which bears three to five minute projections. The egg gradually changes in color from pale yellow to red before hatching.

The wingless nymph is smaller than but similar in shape to the adult. The head and thorax are brown; the eyes are dark red; and the abdomen is pale yellow or light red with a black tip.

The Chinch Bug is found from the east coast into the western plains of Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. Specimens have been examined as far north as Maine, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and South Dakota, and as far south as Louisiana and Alabama.

Chinch Bugs attack turfgrass and wild grasses by piercing the plant with its four-jointed beak. It then sucks out the plant sap. These pests are usually present on drought-stressed lawns.

Chinch Bugs overwinter as adults and then emerge in the spring and deposit eggs singly behind the leaf sheath or in the soil at the base of the small grain crop plant.