SPOTTING GRASSHOPPERS

The UK has 33 native species of grasshoppers and crickets, made up of 11 species of grasshopper, 13 species of bush cricket, four species of true cricket, three groundhoppers, plus one scaly cricket and one mole cricket. Grasshoppers and crickets are easily distinguished by their antennae; grasshoppers have short, blunt antennae, while crickets have very long, tapering antennae that may be much longer than their body. This reflects their different lifestyles – grasshoppers are diurnal, while crickets are active at night, using their long antennae to feel their way around.

Three species of grasshoppers (the meadow, field and common green grasshoppers) remain widespread and fairly common in grassy meadows across most of the UK, but most of the remainder are now scarce to very rare creatures. In gardens and urban areas you’re more likely to encounter bush crickets than grasshoppers, at least in the southern half of Britain, for three species commonly turn up in garden shrubs, hedges and tall vegetation (the speckled, dark and oak bush crickets).

The bush crickets also include some spectacular large species, such as the great green bush cricket and the very rare wart-biter bush cricket (so named because in

Sweden they were once used to bite warts from the skin). 9Ground-hoppers resemble very small, well camouflaged grasshoppers, and so are easily overlooked, but they can be quite common – I have them in my garden in Sussex. The scaly cricket is extremely rare, living among the shingle on Chesil Beach in Dorset, and recorded sporadically on a couple of other similar beaches in the south. The mole cricket, a magnificently weird-looking creature with hugely powerful forelegs for digging, was once widespread but now is known only from a tiny population in the New Forest. Male mole crickets are the loudest UK insects, their call audible at over 500 metres.