Great Green Bush-Cricket

A couple of weeks ago we found this female Great Green Bush-cricket Tettigonia viridissima at Sandwich Bay observatory.

I have been lucky enough to have seen several individuals in the last few weeks - mainly due to the searching skills of Malcolm & Sally.   

Female Great green Bush-cricket

This individual, however, was not hard to see as she was in the middle of the path and just waiting to be stepped on!   We watched for several minutes - as the camera came in closer, so she became more fascinated and actually walked towards it - maybe the reflection was interesting her.

However, after a while we moved on to to some bird watching.

Some while later we returned and much to our amazement she was now further into the side of the path, but was firmly planted with her ovipositor pushed into the ground.

As we got nearer, it was clear that she was laying eggs deep into a crack between broken concrete.   Every so often she almost retracted the ovipositor, changed the angle then pushed it deep into the ground again and started to flex her abdomen.   We watched as she did this several times.

We eventually left her to her work, marvelling at our luck in finding such a great event.

To see the walk click here

To see the egg laying click here