Speckled Bush-cricket nymph
Leptophyes punctatissima
Speckled Bush-cricket · Great Dixter · 8 June 2025

A young Speckled Bush-cricket on a leaf at Great Dixter in June, wingless and translucent green, with antennae several times its own body length. It is a bush-cricket of hedges, scrub and gardens across southern Britain and Europe, living in the foliage rather than on the ground, and June is when the nymphs are out.
Young enough that it will pass through a handful more moults before anything resembling adult wings shows up, and in this species they never amount to much even then. The fine dark speckling over the whole body is the name and the identification in one; no other British bush-cricket has it. The song is so high that most adults over forty cannot hear it at all.
Birds, insects, plants and other wildlife, mostly from Brooklyn, with some from further afield.
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