The Fanciest of Grasshoppers

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About two or three years ago, I decided to leave a big square patch of uncut grass in the middle of my lawn, in the hope of attracting wildlife to the garden and creating a small ecosystem.

Pink Meadow Grasshopper
For the first year or so, I didn’t see much. But then, earlier this year, I took a slow stroll around the garden patch, as I had noticed that there were many baby grasshoppers. To my surprise, a little pink oblong sprang out of the grass and caught onto a stem — it was a bright pink grasshopper.

“How fancy,” I thought to myself.

These very fancy pink grasshoppers are, in fact, standard grasshoppers with a genetic mutation caused by ‘erythrism’. From my understanding, it is considered to be similar to albinism; erythrism affects the pigmentation in these grasshoppers to overproduce red pigments and turn pink.

Unfortunately, due to their lack of camouflage and fancy colouration, they are quite easy prey. 

At the time of writing this, I am still spotting one regularly, but there were three when they were smaller.

Pink Meadow Grasshopper

Grasshoppers up close

A photographic gallery of Pink Meadow Grasshoppers from my garden.

My gear

These photographs were taken with my Canon RP and a Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 USM Autofocus Macro Lens.

Technique

My technique is to put the camera in manual mode, the lens in manual focus, capture a number of images and focus stack in post process.