Urban bush-crickets: the Short-winged Conehead

 

The Short-winged conehead looks very similar to its Long-winged relative. There are green and brown forms, both with a darker dorsal band. I find that short-winged coneheads tend to have darker, pinkish eyes and a reddish tinge on the brown parts. The main differences with the Long-winged Conehead are the short wings, not reaching the tip of the abdomen in (most) adults, the slightly curved ovipositor of females and differences in the male cerci that are hard or impossible to see in the field. The male songs  and the habitat also differ. 

Nymphs appear in June and can sometimes bask in good numbers.

In July, Short-winged Conehead nymphs can be found at the same time than adults.

Behaviour. Short-winged Coneheads are active during the day, basking at the top of clubrushes or grasses, sometimes on seedheads. They are very well camouflaged in natural vegetation. Males call from perches at peak frequencies about 25 KHz. It is common to find many individuals on a small area, although they tend to keep their distance from each other.

A patch of saltmarsh holding a Short-winged Conehead population at the mouth of the river Hull

Habitat. Marshy areas near coasts, estuaries, wetlands and rivers, on rushes or marram grass or reeds. Many northern populations are coastal.

Fieldcraft.  Male song is not audible to all people, so a bat detector is useful. Binoculars come in handy to scan vegetation from floodbanks near saltmarshes. Remember to check any posts or fences, which make convenient basking spots where the bush-crickets stand up. Nymphs can also be found on flowers.

A female  brown form of the Short-winged Conehead basks on the seedheads of Sea Clubrish, where she's perfectly camouflaged, similar shape and colour as the seedheads. 

A female Short-winged Conehead of the typical colour morph.

A male basking and calling from a patch of Sea Couch.

Male Short-winged conehead on a patch of brambles near saltmarsh.

Rafting eggs? Although there is a rare form of the Short-winged Conehead (below) which could be responsible for long-distance dispersal and colonisation of new sites, the species appears to disperse along the coast, estuaries and other waterbodies. Experiments have shown that the eggs can survive salt water inmersion for up to 3 months, which is not surprising, given that most of the vegetation where they perch in the summer is submerged as the rush stems collapse in the winter and are under the high tide line for much of the time. Winter storms often dislodge clumps of marginal vegetation (which might contain eggs) and if these rafts land high up on the tideline the eggs could hatch the next spring on suitable habitat.

A very poor shot of a long-winged form of the Short-winged Conehead. 

A vegetation raft moving along the river Hull with the tide.