David Element's Wildlife Web Page

David Element

Wildlife Photography

and Digital Video Images

Orthopteroids 20 - Grasshoppers of the Hautes-Pyrénées

BROWN MOUNTAIN GRASSHOPPER Podisima pedestris (f)

SMALL GOLD GRASSHOPPER Chrysochraon brachypterus (f)

RATTLE GRASSHOPPER Psophus stridulus (m)

LARGE MOUNTAIN GRASSHOPPER Stauroderus scalaris (m)

SHARP-TAILED GRASSHOPPER Euchorthippus declivus

EGYPTIAN GRASSHOPPER Anacridium aegyptius (NYMPH)

These digital photographs of some of the rather splendid grasshoppers living in the French Hautes-Pyrénées were taken in August 2007 at several different locations.

The range of species alters with altitude and the Rattle Grasshopper and Brown Mountain Grasshopper in particular seem to favour the higher slopes. The hind wings of the male Rattle Grasshopper are a deep red and they are used as flash colouration in order to startle potential predators. Females are paler than their male counterparts and they have shorter wings of a similar hue. Unfortunately these grasshoppers rely too much on their camouflage when they settle on roads and their reluctance to move when confronted by approaching car wheels is often a cause of their instant demise judging from the number of corpses that were observed.

A lack of available space has prevented the inclusion of pictures of both sexes of the rather mundanely named Brown Mountain Grasshopper (the male is much smaller and more mobile than the cumbersome female). The colourful females of this spine-breasted grasshopper species have small vestigial wings. Normally these would be somewhat longer than those of the individual shown here and it is suspected that they were partly consumed by a male during mating as an easy source of protein!

Rattle and Large Mountain Grasshoppers are both able to generate rattling noises in flight and the latter has quite a complicated repertoire of stridulations when compared with the majority of other grasshoppers.

Immature Egyptian Grasshoppers are normally green in colour and this rather attractive example is therefore probably a comparatively uncommon form. It is likely that this individual would have developed into a typically cryptically coloured (i.e. brown) adult.