57 North

A short note about identification

We have “grasshoppers” in our garden. Quite a few of them. Fairly distinctive looking. Green and stripey. I wanted to find out more about them so the starting point seemed to be to find out what sort they are.

Normal observation – antennae size, body shape and size, and main body features (in this case, the pronotum) – determined that these were, in fact, grasshoppers, and not crickets, ground hoppers or any other similar insects.

Right, eleven sorts of British grasshoppers……but only four thought to be this far north. Should be easy.

Common: “may be any combination of green, grey or brown”
Field: “usually brown, but green, grey and reddish forms exist”
Meadow: “normally green with brown wings, but completely green or brown individuals are not uncommon, and some females are quite pink”
Mottled: “very variable….green….dark brown….black”.

So, colour wasn’t going to be much use.

I went for the Meadow Grasshopper because (a) it is the most common, (b) it is flightless and I could see that the wings were very short against body length whereas all the pictures that I could find of the other sorts showed longer wings – also I didn’t see one fly, and (c) the habitat was right “any grassland not too dry”.

The “Common”, which in the odd way that these things are named is less common than the “Meadow”, is always illustrated with very long wings (against body length); the “Field” and the “Mottled” prefer dry to very dry grassland.

I couldn’t tie up the descriptions of the sounds that the various types make with what I could hear. Also my books didn’t have an illustration of the “Meadow” with the distinctive striped body markings that I could see on the several individuals that I was watching. I did find pictures of Chorthippus parallelus var ‘dorsal stripe’ on a biological site on the web showing specimens from southern England that were a good match though.

My observations came to an end when the midges noticed that I was standing around in the garden. I concluded “Meadow” by a short head (or, more correctly, by a short wing).