Ladybirds Out and About

Another lovely sunny day today and this afternoon when the sun was hitting one side of our laurel hedge on the front garden it created a nice warm 'suntrap'; on closer inspection the hedge was covered in ladybirds, over 100 of them were out sunbathing and catching some warm rays..:yess:....Great to see the little fellas again....springs not far away

 

Hi Bilbo - Thanks for your post - I guess your little friends are our native Ladybirds, but please see my post about the Harlequin Ladybird, - the blighter is spreading up from the south / south east - have a look at the link - I think there have been sightings in Derbyshire.

It would seem to be a serious threat and information is requested from gardeners on possible sightings.

Apparently they emerge later than the natives, but best be on our guard.

a-a

 

Hi alex, I'll have a closer look tomorrow just to be sure; if the suns out again that is..., pretty sure they were all natives though..

 

Didn't see any Ladybirds but a Peacock Butterfly was sunning itself on my Mum's garden fence yesterday.
Squashed a few Harlequins last summer.

 

ive seen about 10 in the garden the last few days,also seen a whopper of a bumble bee today i mean huge! xx

 

il keep my eye out aswell,im in derbyshire but il have to google harlequin to recognise them

 

Got little lady bugs hiding in the old stems of the hollyhocks so I shall be leaving those for a while longer.

 

A couple of years back i noticed there were loads of 'lady birds' in my Kitchen turns out on closer inspections they were the 'invaders'...i now know the difference but some are very good mimicks.....i've noticed alot of the genuine ones in the garden already more so than usual....
Good luck to the little fellas

 

I'm pretty sure they use our laurel hedge to hibernate 'en masse', we had similar thing last year as soon as we a couple of nice days they all came out on the sunny side and enjoyed the warmth...

 

Here's a couple of photos of a ladybird on our laurel hedge yesterday

 

I also spotted a hover fly the other day!!

 

i found about 15 hiding in and under my mullen plant,i tried to upload pics yest on here but i dont know how to change file sizes yet ive still not spotted any harlequin ones thou x