Meadow Grasshopper - purple morph (Chorthippus parallelus)

Super close-up, great colours and setting!

Wow! I didn't even know that grasshoppers come in this color. Just lovely!

KCFoggin. The european Meadow Grasshopper often shows polymorphism. This 'purple form' being one of the prettiest. I would expect that your stateside grasshoppers have the same. Latest scientific studies lead to this colour morph trait being fitness relevent and the 'brown morph' has been shown to be a more prolific egg layer than any other.

I live in Norfolk and have never seen one of these. Great find and excellent closeup

Hi AdamT. The purple morph is not that uncommon, but with grasshoppers, because of their poor flying ability, even a dyke can isolate a population, so, when these morphs are found, they are very local, down to an area as little as 4000 square metres (200x200) square, but, where there is one, there are many.
The area where this population is located has a large amount of red clover, so, at first, I thought that maybe the habitat favoured the purple morph, but I don't think that is fact as plain green would be as good, if not better colouration for defence against predation.