SWF

Montana Buffalo Country

East of Glacier National Park

Click on the photo for a better look.
Have you been there?
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see the SkyWatch site here.

Troy and Martha
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Three-banded Grasshopper

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Hadrotettix trifasciatusBe sure to click on the photo for a better view
of the network pattern in the wings and the colors

According to the 'Wyoming Agricultrial Experiment Station Bulletin 912,

"The Three-banded Grasshopper ranges widely in the grasslands of the West in the middle third of the continent. It is a common species of the shortgrass, desert, and mixedgrass prairies. It is less abundant in other prairies and is rare in grass-shrub communities of the intermountain basins. In the tallgrass prairie it occupies areas of sparse vegetation on gravelly hilltops and slopes. This particular species is not considered a serious agricultural pest.

Its feeding on good forage grasses would tend to give it pest status, but research has shown that it feeds more heavily on poor forage plants and plants poisonous to livestock (death camus, milkweeds, some milkvetches, and others). It feeds on grasses, forbs, sedges, dead and weakened insects, plant litter, and dry cattle dung. It feeds chiefly on forbs, with as many as 40 species recorded from analyses of crop contents and direct observations in nature. Examination of 152 specimens collected from several habitats near North Platte, Nebraska revealed that 75 percent of crop contents consisted of forbs, 21 percent grasses and sedge, and 4 percent arthropod parts."

This one was photographed at the Ft. Worth Nature Center and Refuge.
Lower prairie setting close to the West fork of the Trinity River.

I have been seeing a lot of band-winged grasshoppers and tons of slant-faced grasshoppers there, but this is the first of this species that I have seen this year. Maybe I haven't been looking closely enough.

Leave a comment (if you like hoppers) and tell me what you think.
Photo with my Canon G10 'point and shoot'

Troy
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