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#365DaysWild, British insects, cricket, Dark bush-cricket, meadow insects, Pholidoptera griseoaptera
I’ve been back to the field where I saw Friday’s ‘grappling grasshoppers’ to investigate the other interesting insects I noticed. This is one of them, a gloriously ‘armoured’ Dark bush-cricket (Pholidoptera griseoaptera).
According to the Buglife website, you ‘must creep up on them to see them properly’ but, luckily, I had my zoom lens, plus this creature was probably quite confident in its ability to out-leap me if necessary and was too happy basking in the sunshine to be bothered about me.
That is a fierce looking creature!
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I’m sure it’s all for show. 🙂
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That’s one handsome cricket! 🙂
I keep meaning to ask you – have you ever come across a strange sort of substance stretched across stems or grasses (fairly low down, as was the case in our garden some weeks back) with insects inside it, that looks like stretched cling-film? My husband showed me this and I couldn’t for the life of me work out – or find out – what it was. I am assuming it was some kind of mucus that the insect-mother had exuded to protect her offspring. It was quite transparent, and looked for all the world like stretched transparent plastic but obviously it wasn’t.
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I’ve seen webs like that, for the caterpillars of various species, but nothing that looked quite like cling-film.
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There were some kind of insects in it – don’t think it was caterpillars. We tried to get a shot of it but weren’t terribly successful.
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I’ve just put a photo of it on a page in my blog (hidden from the menu, so you’d have to get to it from this link): https://colouringthepast.com/nature-only-can-someone-id-this/ I’d love you to have a look at it and let me know what you think.
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I had a look but my insect knowledge is not good enough to help, sorry.
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