Froghopper

I’m walking with my dad along the Hollinwood Branch Canal Local Nature Reserve:

Hollinwood Branch Canal - Local Nature Reserve - The Hall of Einar - photograph (c) David Bailey (not the)

The Hollinwood Branch Canal was last used as a canal in 1932, when road and rail took over transporting coal. Now there are six lanes of the M60 Manchester Outer Ring Road which cut through it.

Amongst the Nettles and the Brambles, which are making me feel relieved I’m wearing long trousers, is a distinctive black and red bug. It’s the Red-and-black Froghopper, Cercopis vulnerata:

Red-and-black Froghopper - Cercopis vulnerata - The Hall of Einar - photograph (c) David Bailey (not the)

Even if it isn’t poisonous, it looks it. I’m not about to try eating, but it makes a prodigious leap and disappears anyway.

I wonder how soon the M60 will be redundant, falling into ruin, full of craters with trees growing up from the tarmac lanes, and be replaced by a high-speed, pneumatic maglev railway and ultra-fast hologram Internet services? When it is, these bugs will still be here, sucking on the sap of plants, oblivious.

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