Mottled

I need to be a bit careful here, because there is actually a UK species called the Mottled Grasshopper, but I've never seen one, and this definitely isn't it: Myrmeleotettix maculatus is smaller and more compact than this, and both sexes have thickened ends to the antennae, the male's being distinctively clubbed. This is Chorthippus brunneus, the Field Grasshopper - though I'm sticking to my claim that this particular individual is mottled. In terms of colour and pattern it's a very variable species, and my Orthoptera book (Evans & Edmondson) states that this is especially true of females, though the photos they've chosen to illustrate the species don't actually seem to bear this out.

The distinguishing features of the Field Grasshopper are: a pronotum with sharply incurved side keels, and markings that don't meet the rear edge; long wings with a very small bulge on the forewing edge (visible here above the hind femur); and a hairy thorax. If you compare this specimen with the previous one I posted, about four weeks ago, you'll be able to see the similarities and the differences. The earlier individual, which was a male, had more cryptic colouring, making it a little difficult to see the pronotal features, and he was more obviously hairy than this one, which I believe is a female (though I wouldn't want to be quoted on that). 

The most pleasing thing for me about this grasshopper is that she turned up in my garden this afternoon - the first C. brunneus I've ever found here. In fact, I've found more Orthoptera on our property this summer than in the whole of the preceding decade, which suggests that my "wilding"* project is bearing fruit. I was poking around the honeysuckle on the yard wall, looking for 22-spot ladybirds (which I also found, by the way), when she startled me by suddenly springing across the foliage in front of me. I snapped off a dead stem and persuaded her onto it to get this photo, but didn't get her as well oriented as I'd have liked because she'd already climbed onto the very end of it, and I was pretty sure she'd leap off into space if I faffed around too much. In the event though, I got my shots without any grasshopper being harmed, or any photographer winding up on a guilt trip. I then lowered her back down to the plant, and she stepped neatly and safely off the stem onto a leaf.

* = "managed neglect". Well - more or less managed. Probably more less than more, to be honest.