Slender groundhopper

"Good grief!" I said, throwing my bum into reverse, and skidding to a halt. "Who on earth are you??"

Carefully kneeling down next to the geraniums on which he was basking, I chatted away to him in a way that would probably have caused mild concern to any innocent civilians who'd happened to overhear me, pointing out to him that he was clearly some kind of Orthopteran, but that he didn't look like any grasshopper or cricket I'd ever seen before, what with his shagreened body armour and his strangely elongated profile. He made no response to any of these (admittedly quite personal) comments, but carefully gathered his legs beneath him, and the instant I lowered the camera he sprang away into the rose bed, not to be seen again.

Because these days we have all the technology at our disposal, it didn't take me long to establish that my new friend was a slender groundhopper. Groundhoppers, sometimes called pygmy grasshoppers, are an ancient family within the Orthoptera, comprising around 2,000 species worldwide. Only three species are found in the UK though, and one of these, Cepero's groundhopper, is relatively rare, and not much found outside the coastal regions of southern England and South Wales. Of the other two, the slender groundhopper can be distinguished from the common groundhopper by its extraordinary pronotum, which extends back into a point beyond the end of the abdomen; in the common groundhopper the pronotum is shorter, and has a high ridged central keel. The other obvious difference is that in this species the wings are always fully developed, and extend beyond the end of the pronotum, whereas the common groundhopper is almost always short-winged. Males such as this one are 9-12mm long, and females are a little larger.

The preferred habitat of slender groundhoppers is bare mud and short vegetation, in damp, unshaded locations. This speaks more of fens and floodplains than it does of gardens, and the fact that this one turned up in my rose bed today probably says quite a lot about recent Worcestershire weather. They're herbivorous, feeding mainly on mosses, lichens and algae, and unusually the adults can swim as well as fly. Females lay their eggs in spring, directly into the ground or in low vegetation; nymphs can be found from May onwards, and adults appear by August. Another unusual feature of groundhoppers is that they overwinter either as adults or as late-instar nymphs, so this specimen could be up to a year old.

Photographing a creature I'd never seen before always makes me happy, so the little groundhopper got my May Day Holiday Monday off to an excellent start. This afternoon R and I dug over the bare ground where we lost a large choisya during the December freeze, dramatically improved the rather poor soil, and planted a small weeping cherry tree. I then finished the area by planting some ferns and lesser periwinkle, and potted up some French lavender on the patio. By the time we finished all our chores and sat down for a pre-dinner Aperol, I felt that it had been a productive and successful day.