Grasshopper!

[JohnN]

Went into the bathroom this morning and there, sitting on a towel, was a large grasshopper!
This is the first hopper I've seen for years - when I was a kid you couldn't walk across a field without disturbing hundreds of them. This one must have come in thro' the window. It wasn't like the ones I remember, smallish and greenish, this was about 1.5in long and dark brown, but had the big back legs and leapt like a hopper when i went to pick it up. I caught it in a towel and put it outside.

[Colin_M]

Must be something about bathrooms (leaving the light on?).

Several nights this week, there's been a small green cricket above our bathroom window.

[Geoff]

I haven't come across Grasshoppers for years, my wife puts it down to my hearing and says they are still about.

[Johnboy]

I have three different Crickets that inhabit my orchard but am unable to name them. One is small and green and another appreciably much larger and is a straw colour and the one in the middle is also a different colour but also could be called straw. Strange thing is that they do not seem to gravitate because I do not see them in any other parts of the plot.
Has anybody got any ideas why?
JB.

[alan refail]

I have three different Crickets that inhabit my orchard but am unable to name them. One is small and green and another appreciably much larger and is a straw colour and the one in the middle is also a different colour but also could be called straw. Strange thing is that they do not seem to gravitate because I do not see them in any other parts of the plot.
Has anybody got any ideas why?
JB.

Hi JB

Here's a cricket gallery which may help

http://thegreenleaf.co.uk/Wild/C/C1.htm

[Mike Vogel]

Mases of grasshoppers on our allotments - as per every year.

[Johnboy]

Many thanks Alan.
JB.

[Primrose]

We used to have lots of grasshoppers and crickets in our front garden which had probably migrated from a nearby footpath. Most of the trees there have been cut down now and much of the decaying logs from them cleared away by the Council which may have been where they had been breeding. And where many of our local stag beetles bred too, before the decaying logs were unfortunatley removed. I miss their sound - so reminicent of summer.

The other thing I miss seeing these days, which I used to love watching as a child, is all those furry catapillars. I haven't seen any for years. Does anybody know which butterfly they come from?

[Monika]

Try the garden tiger moth, Primrose. Lots of pictures of them in Google.