Hop into summer

Get to know grasshoppers with Peter G. Sutton, author of Field Guide to the Grasshoppers and Allies of Great Britain and Ireland

I’m Peter Sutton, and I have had a passion for the study of grasshoppers and their allies since I first heard Field Grasshoppers singing by an old railway line in Sussex at the age of seven. Since then, I have spent many years studying this amazing group of insects, which also includes some of the largest and most spectacular insects to be found in the British Isles, from the bizarre Mole Cricket and the huge prickly stick-insects of the West Country, to the Great Green Bush-cricket and the strikingly coloured Large Marsh Grasshopper with its scarlet, black and yellow hind legs. All of these fascinating insects can be found in the recently published Field Guide to the Grasshoppers and Allies of Great Britain and Ireland that I wrote with Björn Beckmann, with every species beautifully illustrated by Richard Lewington.

These are very exciting times for those who are interested in the grasshoppers and their allies. There have been some fantastic additions to our wildlife in recent years as new species have arrived through the natural process of climate-induced migration. If someone had said to me, as that seven-year-old boy looking for grasshoppers, that during my lifetime, I would be able to find Blue-winged Grasshoppers and Praying Mantises in the coastal counties of southern England, I wouldn’t have believed them. I can well remember the sheer excitement of a friend who told me that he had found and photographed a colony of Gigantic Praying Mantises on the Isle of Wight last summer!

Start with sound

Grasshoppers provide the evocative soundtrack to warm, summer days and a good way to begin studying this group is to listen for them when you are out walking in the countryside. Woodlands, wetlands, grasslands and heathlands all have their own special species. Even urban areas can be surprisingly rewarding. In certain habitats, like coastal sand dune systems and chalk downland, several different species can be locally abundant. The Field Guide goes into more details on the different habitats where you are likely to come across grasshoppers and their allies.

With a bit of practice, you can also learn to identify them from their characteristic songs. There are plenty of recordings online to listen to and compare. The Field Guide can help here too, with QR codes linking to recordings. If you hover your mobile phone over the code, you can listen to and become familiar with the song of each species, from the extraordinary ‘wheezing’ song of the Stripe-winged Grasshopper to the rhythmic sewing machine ticking of the Common Green Grasshopper.

As a point of interest, the high frequency of many species in this group means that young people can hear them quite easily, but older people can’t! Helpfully, a bat detector can be used to listen for the singing species if you can no longer hear them. There are instructions on how to do so in the Field Guide, along with other methods for searching for grasshoppers and their allies.

Spotting tips

When you have learnt which habitats are likely to harbour grasshoppers, they can be quite easy to locate, either by listening for their song on warm, sunny days or by carefully walking through grassland where you can see them jumping in front of you. Some species, like the Field Grasshopper, will fly for short distances revealing their bright orange and red abdomens.

Grasshoppers can be told from bush-crickets by their shorter antennae, but separating species of grasshoppers can be trickier. One important feature in many grasshoppers is the shape of the side of the pronotum (the section just behind the head). Colour can be a helpful aid, but be aware that there can be significant colour variation in individuals of the same species. A number of grasshoppers that are typically green can occasionally have stunning purple varieties! The Field Guide includes useful tips about identification features that will allow you to confidently identify each species, as well as a comprehensive identification key.

Once you have become familiar with grasshoppers, perhaps even seeking to find some of the rarer species in their specialised habitats, you may begin to take an interest in other members of the group, such as the bush-crickets. These are altogether more elusive, but that just magnifies the satisfaction of finding and observing them! They have a tendency of disappearing into vegetation, never to be seen again, and must be approached slowly and cautiously. But when you do see a Bog Bush-cricket in heather, or the rare and spectacular Wart-biter singing in the long, lush grass of Sussex Downland, it is a moment never to be forgotten.

All illustrations by kind permission of Richard Lewington