Meadow pipits

Meadow pipits are so common and widely distributed that they tend to be overlooked, but with their speckled breasts and neatly patterned wings they are attractive birds. 

The two locations where I most often encounter them here in the North East are coastal grasslands and moorland edge. This bird was photographed in near Hawthorn Dene, on the Durham coast.

I encountered this bird on Blanchland moor, just when the bell heather was beginning to bloom. Every time I approached, it rose and flew a little further away, so I suspect it was decoying me away from its nest.

Another bird from the edge of Blanchland moor. This one has no fewer than three grasshoppers in its beak and was about to feed fledglings. When you think about it, that's is pretty impressive hunting, catching the third when you've already got a beak full! 

A butterfly haven in an old limestone quarry

This is Ashes quarry, a former limestone quarry near Stanhope in Weardale that is now a wonderful nature reserve. The quarry floor is partially flooded and is a breeding place for dragonflies and damselflies, but this sheltered western end, which is mostly rough grassland and quarry spoil heaps, is always a good spot to look for butterflies.

It was good to see a small colony of wall browns has become established here. This is a butterfly that needs warmth and shelter, so this sun-trap, with its sun-warmed rock, clearly suits it very well.

Wall browns are very skittish insects, never settling for long in one place. This individual alternated between basking on its pile of rocks and feeding on herb robert flowers blooming amongst the stones.

The convenient supply of floral nectar meant that this one was constantly disturbed by rival males that tried to take over its domain. Wall browns are ferociously territorial, so each one of these incursions resulted in an aerial dogfight, as the butterflies spiralled upwards, so close to me that I could hear their wings clashing, before they separated and fluttered back to their respective territories.

Eventually a female arrived and courtsship began, with the pair walking through the grass and the male tapping the female with his antennae. I think the male is the closer of the two in this picture, with some wing edge damage that might have occurred during one of those bruising dogfights with a rival.

Wall brown colonies tend to be small and don't often persist in the same place for long, but this quarry site is sheltered and warm, with plenty of the caterpillar food plants (grasses), so it might last for a few years.

The warm piles of stones in the quarry are also excellent habitat for sun-basking common darter dragonflies ....

..... chirruping field grasshoppers Chorthippus brunneus

..... and this devil's coach-horse Ocypus olens. This beetle (more pics here) isn't often seen out and about in bright sunlight - it's more often seen in twilight.

Soundtrack to Summer

Today's Guardian Country Diary is about grasshoppers.

These lovely insects, that provide a soperific soundtrack to late summer, are sun-loving so their greatest species diversity in the UK is concentrated in southern England.

We have two common species here in the North Pennines ......

... the green grasshopper  Omocestus viridulus....

.... and the meadow grasshopper Chorthippus parallelus.

Both 'sing' by stridulating - dragging those pegs on their hind femur over the hard edges of the wing. The meadow grasshopper has the most varied song and both sexes chirrup, though the female's song is quieter than the male's because those stridulatory pegs tend to be smaller in females.

Males have three distinct songs - a loud one for attraction, a quieter one for courtship and a stucatto one during mating. 

They can be hard to spot because they are well camouflaged amongst dry grasses and heather, and on warm afternoons their -leap-flutter-glide escape technique can make them hard to catch.

Grasshoppers hatch from overwintering eggs as a tiny worm-like organism that then undergoes four moults as the nymph grows. This is a meadow grasshopper in the  penultimate instar before becoming an adult - it still has wing stubs but these will reach full size during the next moult. 

This female, sitting in the sun amongst bell heather, has lost her hind leg on the left-hand side. Nymphs in early instars can regenerate lost legs but this one must have lost the limb after becoming an adult, perhaps to escape the grip of a bird's beak.

Surprisingly, there are documented instances of grasshoppers that have lost a hind leg being able to stridulate and respond to a mate's song with the remaining limb. The impediment must make for lop-sided leaps though!

Grasshopper

We came upon this male field grasshopper Chorthippus brunneus sunbathing on the steps down to Hawthorn Hive on the Durham Coast, this afternoon. His courting days are over and he was making the most of the warm mid-day sun, before the frosts arrive and bring an end to his short life. Somewhere there will be packets of eggs, carefully inserted amongst grass roots by his mate who he would have serenaded by sawing the pegs on his legs back and forward across those membranous wings, in the process of stridulation.  Next spring they'll hatch and the nymphs that emerge will grow and moult four times before they reach maturity - and then the next generation of chirruping grasshoppers will begin the whole cycle all over again.
You can listen to a field grasshopper's song here

For more grasshoppers, click here

Masters of Camouflage

Grasshoppers hatch in May, from eggs that have spent the winter buried in the soil, down among the grass roots, and by mid-June their nymphs have grown and passed through three moults. At this stage they resemble miniature adults but don’t have functional wings, so their best defensive strategy is to remain motionless. If they are disturbed they use their long hind legs to hop, but never very far. Only when they undergo their final moult will they develop full-sized wings and then they can leap and glide away out of danger, but for now camouflage is their salvation. At this stage they are silent, unable to produce the chirrups that they use as courtship signals and which become part of the soundtrack of summer on hot August days.

In this view you can see the partially formed wings of the nymph. The grasshopper song - stridulation - is produced by pegs on the legs rubbing against the hard edge of the wing - so grasshoppers can't begin singing until their wings are fully formed.

Grasshoppers are an essential element in the soundtrack of summer. Just listening to their song conjures up mental images of warm summers days and picnics on dry sunny banks where the grasses are slowly turning straw-yellow in the heat and drought. The hotter it gets, the louder the grasshoppers seem to chirrup – although the individual in the top picture looks like he’s feeling the sweltering heat and wiping the sweat from his brow. There are only 27 species of grasshopper and cricket native to the British Isles so it isn’t too daunting a task to get to know them all. There’s even a web site entirely dedicated to them at http://www.orthoptera.org.uk/