Quite often when I am walking through grassy fields, the ground in front of me seems to explode with grasshoppers arcing through the air in all directions. Last week during a visit to Occoquan Bay National Wildlife Refuge, I managed to capture images of two of them.
I am not certain of the species of the formidable looking grasshopper in the first photo. When I looked through sources on line, however, it looked most like an American Bird Grasshopper (Schistocerca americana). Grasshoppers like this always make me think of medieval knights, suited up in protective armor.
The insect in the second image is almost certainly a katydid, and not a grasshopper—the extremely long antennae are often an easy identification feature. I love the brilliant green of the katydid’s body and its matching green eyes. There are lots of different kinds of katydids and I do not know to which species “my” katydid belongs.
We have had a lot of rainy weather recently and temperatures have noticeably dropped. Today’s forecast calls for intermittent rain and a high temperature of only 50 degrees (10 degrees C). I wonder if this cool, rainy period will mark the end of the season for some of the insects that I have been photographing during the past few months.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Mike Powell 