Blue-winged Grasshopper

The blue-winged grasshopper is a small band-winged grasshopper found across Europe, North Africa, and temperate Asia, typically on bare or sparsely vegetated ground. At rest its mottled gray-brown body is superbly camouflaged against stony or sandy soil, but when flushed it reveals bright blue hindwings edged with a dark band, a startling flash of color visible only in flight.

This dramatic contrast between cryptic resting coloration and vivid flight coloration is thought to help confuse predators: the insect appears to vanish the instant it lands and its wings close again, hiding the blue color.

• Small to medium grasshopper, 1.5–2.5 cm long
• Mottled gray-brown body that closely matches bare or stony ground
• Hindwings bright blue at the base with a dark band near the tip, visible only during flight
• Hind tibiae often tinged bluish
• Distinguished from the similar red-winged grasshopper (Oedipoda germanica) by blue rather than red hindwing coloration

Found on dry, sparsely vegetated ground including sand dunes, gravel pits, quarries, railway embankments, and heathland across Europe, North Africa, and temperate Asia, generally favoring warm, open, often disturbed sites.

Herbivorous, feeding on low-growing grasses and herbaceous plants. Relies on cryptic coloration while at rest on bare ground, then produces a sudden flash of blue wing color accompanied by a crackling wingbeat sound when flushed, a display thought to startle or disorient predators before the grasshopper lands and disappears again against the substrate.

Eggs are laid in pods in bare soil in late summer and overwinter before hatching the following spring. Nymphs molt through several instars over the summer months. There is one generation per year, with adults most active from mid-summer through autumn.