Cricket action and a colour-ringed Cormorant

I had quite a good orthoptera day today; a site visit to Langar Airfield produced loads of Roesel's Bush-crickets in the long grass on the western side of the airfield near the control tower, plus at least two female Long-winged Coneheads.

Long-winged Conehead at Langar Airfield

When I got home, I trimmed out buddleja (which was beginning to overhang the road a bit too much), and in the process found a green cricket nymph. By the time I'd gone to fetch my camera it had wandered off and I couldn't find it again, but I'm pretty sure it was an Oak Bush Cricket - the first cricket of any species I've had in the garden, which is only a small urban one. This page on the orthoptera.org.uk website shows what these beasts look like (or at least, the adults).

Whilst on the subject of my garden, I cut the mini-meadow at the weekend. This resulted in invertebrate Armageddon, about which I felt a bit guilty (especially as the chickens were out and had a field day in the cut grass...), and mainly I didn't know what I was looking at, but I saw a couple of 14-spot Ladybirds (yellow and black), and some shieldbugs, which I looked up on the very useful British Bugs website; they proved to be Common Green Shieldbug nymphs.


Common Green Shieldbug nymph in Newark

Anyway, back to birds. Once again not much at Collingham late PM. There was a Dunlin (still?) on the Main Pit, along with a colour-ringed juvenile Cormorant; I first thought the ring read '912', but a better angle showed it to actually read ZL6. A quick check here (accessed via the cr-birding.org website) suggests this bird was ringed at Rutland Water - but I will seek confirmation of this. Elsewhere, on the Silt Lagoon there was a party of 8 Shelduck - seemingly an adult female and 7 immatures. And that was about it!

Colour-ringed Cormorant (ZL6) at Collingham