Cricket season

Last year I found a few speckled bush crickets, but this year we’ve been lucky to have two bush cricket species in the garden, and I’ve seen them develop from tiny aphid-sized nymphs to (almost) full size:

Here’s a (very) Speckled Bush Cricket nymph in May

and here’s what she’s grown into

Meanwhile, the Oak Bush Crickets (a new species to me) started out like this in May

and have become tree-dwelling aphid-hunting predators – we could do with a few of those!