Red-legged Grasshopper on a stem

Melanoplus femurrubrum

Red-legged Grasshopper · Upstate New York · 15 August 2025

A Red-legged Grasshopper clinging to a grass stem in an Upstate New York meadow in August, sitting tight rather than jumping. It is among the commonest grasshoppers on the continent, in hayfields, roadsides and any rough grass from Canada to Mexico, and by late summer the year's crop are full-grown adults.

Not the meadow katydid it was first written up as: the antennae are short and stout, which makes it a grasshopper, where a katydid's would be longer than its body. The red shins give it its name, and the Latin says the same thing, femurrubrum, red thigh. The eggs spend the winter in the soil and hatch in late spring, so every adult in an August meadow hatched that year.