The twig amongst the thorns

ID: Stick Insect

While just returning from the early morning walk, spotting and framing the avian, almost to stave away from the harsh sunlight, stumbled upon this beauty, almost missing it as I, almost naively, thought it to be a normal twig. The out of place and slightly dark colour of it brought in some suspicion, and on a closer look realized it was a beautifully camouflaged stick insect. The beauty had an amazing texture to its body, almost mimicking the threads/ strands of a plant and the thorny projections on its head made it blend well with the thorny plant that it was perched in. It’s a mystery how these slow moving beauties move around as this plant was pretty isolated and easily 5-6 feet away from any other plant and metres away from tall trees.

EXIF:
Canon 80D
Canon 100mm macro
F/10
Shutterspeed 1/200
ISO 125
Handheld, External flash fired

Location: Outskirts of Hubli

Nature is amazing. I would not have spotted it if there was not the slight difference in the darker shade as you have mentioned. Really a very close observation required. Thanks for sharing.

This one is amazing. Watching this is so exciting. I am sure 99% of the people will fail to recognise and simply walk past. Nice spotting. Thanks for sharing.

Cheers,
Sabyasachi

Promoting this in our IndiaWilds twitter handle.