Field Grasshopper

I was on a great course today on Identifying Grasshoppers and Bush-crickets organised by the Chilterns Commons Project and BMERC, the county Environmental Records Centre, and led by Adrian Hickman. As with all courses like this, I found that about two-thirds of the way through I felt more ignorant and less confident than when I started, as we learned about all the variation that can be encountered when trying to identify species. However, with a bit of perseverence I got to the end of the day feeling better equipped to find and identify orthoptera. This female Field Grasshopper, Corthippus brunneus, clearly recognised my new-found expertise and rested on my finger happily for quite a while.