THE ETERNAL JUMP

On the following photograph you can take a good look at the beautiful red wings of the Rattle grasshopper (Psophus stridulus).

These are the hindwings, covered with harder protective forewings, colored as the rest of the body to provide good camouflage. The more delicate hindwings, the most important gliding part of the grasshopper's anatomy are visible only in prolonged jumps ... or, like in this case - in death.

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I was able to take these shots because I found a dead grasshopper on the small mountain road, on the northern end of my Istra peninsula. I took the little corpse home and put it in this pseudo - jumping position, on a sheet of white paper. This is a male of this species. Only males have large, well-developed hindwings that enable the long jumps and short flights. On the following photograph ...

... you can see the female ... and this grasshopper ...

... it's alive. It was photographed in the same mountain area, about 100 kilometers from my hometown, there on the spot ... on the fallen branch of the pine tree ... so you can see how well is the Rattle grasshopper camouflaged on this kind of surfaces. You can also notice, how the forewings of the female are considerably shorter and don't cover the entire abdomen, the hindwings underneath are also short and unfit for the short grasshopper - style flights.
These grasshoppers are kind of exotic for me, because I have to drive at least 80 - 100 kilometers to find them in their habitat. On mountain meadows, and at the edges of coniferous forests.
These are old shots from 2014, my last summer visit to that area. I drove to the mountains a few more times since then, but always in winter, that in the mountain starts considerably earlier than in my southern, seaside area.
It's an endangered species in many parts of Europe where once was abundant. Loss of natural habitat, mountain pastures and meadows is the main reason. Many interesting species don't care about how lovely our parks and gardens look, with red roses, big flowers and whatever, they need a bit of wilderness to thrive ... it's good to remember that fact when thinking about our love or just simple understanding of nature on this planet.

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I plan to do another trip to that area in May or June, and make a series of posts about plants and animals in that rich environment, very different from my area ... so the Psophus stridulus will probably jump in again, and reappear here on HIVE whithin a longer story about the mountain range called Chicharia that marks the northern border of this region surrounded mostly by the sea.

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As always in these posts on HIVE, the photographs are my work.