Baby Bush Cricket Meets Baby Conehead

e6filmuser

I had been trying to catch up with an elusive wasp when I saw a tiny brown Bush Cricket nymph (about the size of my smallest fingernail). I found this to be elusive to but it finally reached a place where it tolerated my presence. It was on the leaf of some coarse, self-sown wild grass. There were many tiers of overlapping, almost horizontal, tips of leaves, which tended to block my line of sight. However, these provided me with a rare image opportunity.

When I had taken a few shots, the nymph moved slowly on, along a leaf. When it stopped I started framing it and noticed what I thought was a tiny bug (Hemiptera) with exceptionally long antennae. I took some shots of the “bug” and some with it in the frame with the hopper. I have seen parasitic wasps hunting their host insects on foliage and the movement here looked like that. I took pictures with the suspected wasp in them only to take a look later to identify it.

Only when I took close-ups of the “bug” did I see its orthopteran morphology.

The characteristic shape and two-tone colouring led me to the Conehead pages of my insect guide book. I had seen adults of the Short-winged Conehead for the first time, about 100 feet away from where I found the nymph, in August last year. It is good to know that they are breeding and becoming established.

https://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1557705/0

https://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1560200/#14582511

Olympus EM-1 (aperture priority), Olympus 4/3 x2 TC, Olympus 4/3 50mm f2 macro, f9 shutter around 1/100 sec, hand-held.

The stereos are crosseye.

The first image is a bit soft but the stereo is OK.

Harold