David Element
Wildlife
Photography and Digital Video Images
____________________________________________Grasshoppers
and Crickets 38 – Slender Blue-winged Grasshoppers
SLENDER
BLUE-WINGED GRASSHOPPER Sphingonotus caerulans
SLENDER
BLUE-WINGED GRASSHOPPER Sphingonotus caerulans
SLENDER
BLUE-WINGED GRASSHOPPER Sphingonotus caerulans
SLENDER BLUE-WINGED GRASSHOPPER Sphingonotus caerulans
·
The
Slender Blue-winged Grasshopper Sphingonotus
caerulans
is less robust in appearance than the Blue-winged or
Blue Band-winged Grasshopper Oedipoda coerulescens,
the most likely confusion species, and it lacks any ‘steps’ on the upper
surface of the tapered hind femurs associated with the latter. The eponymous
blue hindwings are hidden when these cryptically camouflaged grasshoppers are
at rest, but they are used as flash colouration to deter any predators that
might disturb them. The colours will only become visible as these grasshoppers
take flight if they are approached too closely (seeing them certainly helps
with their identification, even if it only separates them from similar
grasshoppers with red hindwings – note also that there are no black bands on
the hindwings of S. caerulans) but they will
normally sit motionless, relying on their virtual invisibility against
backgrounds of a similar appearance. The above photographs were taken at a
coastal location in the Vendée, western France.
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