From your description — a small tower of mud balls, about 4 inches high, with a hole in the center — this is almost certainly a cricket burrow, specifically a type of mole cricket or ground-dwelling insect that creates mud turrets.
Here’s why:
🔍 Key Clues
- Tower of mud balls
- Many burrowing insects (mole crickets, cicadas, and some beetles) push out soil when digging.
- They often create small “volcano”-shaped mounds.
- Hole in the center
- This is the entrance to their underground tunnel.
- The insect lives below ground, and the hole is its exit.
- Size ~4 inches high
- Matches mole cricket mounds or some cicada nymph emergence holes.
- Too small for a toad or mammal burrow, too large for ants.
🐛 Most Likely Culprits
- Mole crickets
- Burrow underground and push soil to the surface in cylindrical mud pellets.
- Active in spring and summer.
- Can damage lawns by tunneling.
- Cicada nymphs
- Dig vertical tunnels, sometimes leaving small soil towers above.
- Usually more cone-shaped than cylindrical.
- Small burrowing beetles
- Rare, but can make tiny mounds with central holes.
✅ What to Do
- Observe at night: mole crickets may be active near the mound.
- If your lawn shows damage (brown patches, sunken soil), it may need pest control.
- Otherwise, these are mostly harmless and part of natural soil aeration.
If you want, I can give you a clear picture guide of common lawn mud towers so you can identify exactly whether it’s a mole cricket, cicada, or something else.
Do you want me to do that?
