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A female bog bush-cricket standing on a branch. It's a brown insect with incredibly long back legs, long antennae and a long, upcurved ovipositor

Female bog bush-cricket © Brian Eversham

Bog bush-cricket

This scarce bush-cricket can be found on the boggy parts of heathlands.

Enw gwyddonol

Metrioptera brachyptera

Pryd i'w gweld

Adults: July to November

Species information

Category

Ystadegau

Length: 11-21 mm

Statws cadwraethol

Nationally Scarce

Ynghylch

The bog bush-cricket is a scarce insect in Britain. It has very specific habitat needs, requiring lowland bogs or wet areas of heathland with purple moor-grass and cross-leaved heath. As these habitats have been lost, the bog bush-cricket has declined with them. Like other crickets and bush-crickets, males 'sing' by rapidly rubbing their wings together. Females use their sword-like ovipositor to lay eggs in purple moor-grass.

Sut i'w hadnabod

A medium-sized insect, with extremely long back legs and antennae. It has short wings that usually reach the middle of the abdomen, though there is a rare form with wings that are longer than the abdomen. It has a greenish belly and comes in two colour forms: green and brown. The green form is green on top of the head, pronotum (the saddle-like section behind the head) and wings. The brown form is brown on those areas. The side of the pronotum has a pale border along the rear edge, which helps distinguish it from the similar and more common Roesel's bush-cricket (which has a pale margin along all edges).

The female has a long, upwardly curved ovipositor at the end of her body. The song of the male is soft but shrill, sometimes likened to a rapidly ticking watch. When heard through a bat detector, it sounds like a chuffing train.

Dosbarthiad

Widespread but locally distributed in England and Wales. Most common on lowland heaths in southern England. In Scotland, they are known from only one area of Dumfries and Galloway.

Roeddech chi yn gwybod?

After being laid in late summer or autumn, the eggs go into diapause (a form of delayed development) and won't hatch until their second spring.