Slant-faced Grasshopper

Description:

Atractomorpha psittacina psittacina (Haan, 1842) When you look at this subspecies of Slant-faced Grasshopper, you only see "green" . They are pretty much green all over and for these little creatures it is a wonderful way to blend in with the leaves they live on. However, if you want to take a picture of one it can be difficult to even see it. When I came across a place where there were several of them, my eyes kind of tuned in to how they look and then it was not so difficult.

Habitat:

I spotted many of these grasshoppers on a patch of Sweet Potato (Ipomoea batatas) behind the rice mill water tanks. there were so many that I became a little over-ambitious and started trying to sort out which were juveniles, which were adults, then males and females etc. etc. and needless to say, I got in a dreadful mess.

Notes:

Only when I saw a copulating couple did I have a proper strategy to sort out the problem mentioned above. So I had to be a little more patient and I kept going back to that area and taking pictures until I had several copulating pairs. I have displayed three couples here - enough to illustrate my point. Simply by looking at the mating pairs, a number of identifiers jump out at you.: 1. The male is much smaller than the female. 2. The female is more greyish or bluish green than the male which is clearly nothing but raw green. 3. Not quite so obvious, but the females appear to have two whitish spots at the base of their wings (I have not noticed this on males. There are, of course many more identifying features, but the ones mentioned got me sorted out. So I got a start and it is a lot easier now. Additional pictures and info - https://www.google.com/search?source=uni...