Red-Legged Grasshopper - Melanoplus femurrubrum
What a fine sight. We actually first saw one of the individuals featured in these images earlier during the highlights of 2023. That's quite a long time to wait for an official showcase, but here they are to behold! The humble and athletic Grasshopper gazing out upon a front yard at two points in time: the edge of summer (female) and the beginnings of autumn (male). It's clear to tell when images belong to which season given how the leaves' colors have changed over just a few weeks. Nevertheless, it wasn't time just yet to pull the stalks (the roots are left behind which grow new milkweed next year) as there were a few seed pods that needed to open and let loose the many tufted seeds into the air, but I digress. While this specie will perch on these leaves to look upon their changing world and enjoy the warm sun (for a metabolic boost), a Red-Legged Grasshopper will not sample a bite. Consuming a milkweed leaf containing toxic sap would prove to be fatal, or debilitating at the very least. Despite a seasonal shift, there are still plenty of herbaceous plants and grasses to chew up.
More pressingly, there needs to be suitable soil for the female Red-Legged Grasshoppers to place eggs in, for it is the eggs are the ones who will overwinter thanks to earth covering them to insulate them from the cold. The green/brown nymphs appear in my area from mid-July through August, and it doesn't take much grazing to gradually metamorphose into the adult form seen in these pictures. On the subject of molting: while it was foremost important to give this "2023 Highlight" the spotlight it deserves and give some appreciation for this well-known green insect, identifying this insect in its nymph instars can be tricky. Ever since I found that Two-Striped Grasshopper in the front yard, reasons to second guess which nymphs were which increased! At they diverge in appearance when they arrive at adulthood; compared to the Two-Striped Grasshopper (M. bivittatus), the Red-Legged Grasshopper tends to be smaller and doesn't feature two yellowish stripes running along its back from eye to wingtip. Pictures 2 and 9 showcase this lack of stripe clearly. The Red-Legged specie may seem relatively plain, but there's a lot to admire about them when you can get a close-up, or more accurately, if you can get a close up. Look at the hindlegs of Pictures 1 and 10: they are locked and ready to thrust him onto the lawn.
Pictures were taken on September 13 and October 1, 2023 with a Google Pixel 4. For confirmation: the summer Grasshopper is a female as shown by the tip of her abdomen (it tapers to a clasping point); the autumnal Grasshopper is a male as his abdomen is wide, bulbous and curves upward at the tip. Mystery solved!
