Camouflaged

It's largely been a useful day dealing with the logistics for the interment of Dad's ashes on Tuesday next week and estate admin.  As a result I've not been that far from home.  I've managed to miss the emergence of another dragonfly this morning - ho hum.  

Instead, after a root about the garden, here is a tiny female speckled bush cricket perfectly camouflaged against the leaf she is sitting on.

She's a youngster still, with a fair bit of growing yet to do.   Ignoring her impressively long antennae (the thing that differentiates grass hoppers from crickets), she's only about 1cm long at present.  She will eventually be twice as long, but she is already showing the first signs of the development of the upturned, scimitar-shaped appendage at her rear that marks her as an adult and which she will use to oviposit her eggs. That ovipositer will add another 1cm to her length making her about 3cm long in total (excluding those antennae). When she finally matures she will also have a brown stripe along the top of her back.

Despite being tiny, she's actually quite tricky to photograph with a macro lens, as it's very hard to fit her into the depth of field available in a single. shot.  You can forget trying to photostack her, as she doesn't sit still for long and her antennae seem to move around a lot.  I've had to settle for getting most of her in focus!