Eliot Jenkins

Grasshopper

Acrididae · Grasshoppers & crickets

Grasshopper in the leaf litter

Redwoods, Northern California, 24 April 2025

Grasshopper in the leaf litter

A grasshopper sitting motionless in the leaf litter of the redwood forest, mottled brown from antennae to wingtip and matching the dead leaves almost exactly. Grasshoppers are creatures of open, sunny ground, and a forest-floor one is at the edge of its world, in the clearings where the light gets through.

Camouflage is doing all the work here. Grasshoppers rely far more on staying unseen than on speed once something is already looking their way, and the jump is a last resort: it is powerful but not aimed, and a grasshopper has no idea where it will land.

Birds, insects, plants and other wildlife, mostly from Brooklyn, with some from further afield.

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