10.
vacated their nest and were nowhere to be found. But
this latest thing was far from dead, indeed it
occasionally perambulated around its cardboard box and
was clearly seen through the piece of polythene that
replaced its lid.
At first glance it appeared to be a locust, being large,
some 5 or 6cms long, with long spindly legs. But no
locust that I knew of had long thin antennae held back
and extending beyond its abdomen. Further, its long
horny wings concealed a long ovipositor different to any
locust. So this was a bush cricket, and what a bush
"cricket. In England we have only one such that attains
any size and that is the Great Green Bush Cricket, but
as its name suggests, this is green and the specimen
before me was most definately brown.
This cricket had been found by a Mr David Welsman who
works at the Marconi Factory in Chelmsford on the 7th
August 1975.
Now I know little of bush crickets and telephone calls
to likely experts proved of no avail since there are
apparently a number of odd crickets that sometimes find
their way to England. Then one day, again on my return
from lunch, yet another visitor was at my desk.
Standing this time. Decticus albifrons were the words
with which he greeted me and for all that that meant he
might have been an alien visitor himself. But no, it
was Dr. Tony Warne, from the Nature Conservancy office
in Colchester. Having looked at the cricket, now in a
large glass aquarium, he not only identified it but pro-
claimed it dangerous and liable to bite for it normally
feeds on grasshoppers and other insects and should have
been doing so in some hot Mediterranean country where it
would be living in hot dry scrubby grassland. Its
nearest relative in this country is the Wart Biter,
another cricket but this is rather small and prefers a
moist habitat amongst damp grasses.
How it came to be in the Marconi Factory is still