Wednesday, June 20, 2012

[jules' pics] camouflage

There is a patch of land down the road from our house which has been mostly wild but inaccessible ever since we arrived. The council bought up the land years ago as it is the site of an old important temple, and they seem to have been spending a bit of year end money on it here and there. This year it opened up. It is no longer so wild but it is presently possible to go hunting in the grounds. Well, bug hunting anyway. I hope it does not get grassed over, as that would spoil the fun.
grasshopper
Japanese grasshoppers look headless until you get eye to eye with them. They are also not that good at hiding, which must help the mantises grow fat.

purple flower
Many of these purple cloverish things are sprouting. I suppose, to fit in with the bug hunting theme I had better pretend there was a butterly on top of it just before I pressed the shutter.

bug
But on the leaves of the cloverish plants were these odd looking things. I'm guesing that their ruse is to look less delicious than grasshoppers, as they were not even attempting to blend in to their surroundings.

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Posted By Blogger to jules' pics at 6/20/2012 01:47:00 PM

4 comments:

andrewt said...

Your orange & black insect looks like a ladybird larvae - typically they exude toxins & the coloration is advertising this. Some have a distinctive smell when handled - or when a photgraphers prods them to move a more photogenic position.

Anonymous said...

The larvae looks like a 7-spot ladybird (Coccinella 7-punctata)

Vinny Burgoo said...

The bug is hiding in the 1980s. Very sensible. It's safe here.

andrewt said...

Thanks crshortall.

I was suprised to see digits in a species name, but its seems to have been Linnaeus who put them there!