Chorthippus parallelus (Zetterstedt, 1821)

Photos: Click on a thumbnail to see a larger picture.

Status: British Isles native species.

Description: Green-coloured but often with brown wings and sometimes entirely brown coloured. Pronotal side-keels only very slightly incurved. Some adult females are a vivid pinkish purple.

Size: 10-23 mm

Wings: Males are long-winged, while females are usually short-winged, but a fully winged form occurs (f. explicatus).

Stridulation: Buzzing with a rapid irregular pulse, repeated at varying intervals; similar to Heath Grasshopper but longer and quieter, lasting 3-5 seconds.

Recordings: Note, your ability to play these recordingsdepends upon the configuration of your computer and browser.

A cold Meadow Grasshopper stridulates slowly, at about half normal speed. Recorded with a bat detector.
Source: Malcolm Lee

The typical sound of the Meadow Grasshopper recorded with a bat detector.
Source: Malcolm Lee

Food: Herbivorous, feeding mainly on grasses.

Habitat: Coarse grasses in a wide range of habitats such as sand dunes, saltmarshes, woodland rides, roadside verges, waste ground, valley wetlands and wet grassy moorland. The eggs are laid just below the soil surface.

Phenology: Long season with nymphs hatching in April. Adults appear by June and remain abundant through to September, some may survive into November.

Distribution: The records held by the National Biodiversity Network are shown in the map below.

Open interactive map in new window

Only the following datasets are included:

• Biological Records Centre - Grasshopper and Cricket (Orthoptera) and related species records from Britain and Ireland to 2007

Other datasets on the gateway may hold additional information.