Subtle

Another day, another hopper - though it's not what I'd been expecting to post today. When R and I decided to go to Stratford this afternoon for a mildly celebratory lunch, I was sure I'd get a dragon or a demoiselle at the river, but fifteen minutes of searching there got me Nodonata© at all. So back home, with a couple of time-sensitive chores completed, I had to scuttle about in search of a Something Else, and of the few Somethings I managed to snap, this is the one I like best.

By now you probably don't need me to tell you that this is a Lesser Marsh Grasshopper - long, functional wings with sharply expanded radial cells, and straight pronotal side keels, are the giveaways. The subtle colouring of this male is much more typical than that of the female I posted a couple of weeks ago, and this made him harder to spot in the dry grass of the meadow. You might have noticed that he lacks the white "albomarginatus" marking along the costal wing edge, which is almost always seen in females of this species, and almost never in males.