Ladybirds?

I actually saw one this morning, I wonder if its my hearing these days that means I dont know they are there anymore.

 

The above two photos were taken at Birchington on Sea, Kent, this afternoon. The first was accidental, as I was after the plant it was on.

 

It's nice there are ladybirds still around in places. They used to be common here but these days I see very few. Last year I only saw two and one of those was very tiny.

 

I leave my front lawn long throughout the summer and get plenty of grasshoppers. If you walk on it, every step causes at least one "hop".

 

Found plenty of ladybirds on a recent walk. This one was sharing its nettle leaf with a spider.

 

Every winter we get about 30 - 40 ladybirds come into our bathroom and stay until spring in the same corner. A few drop into the bath when it gets a bit steamy. The only year they didn't come in was when we had painted the ceiling. They are all sizes and colours and have now only just finished leaving. How do they know to come into the same room every year?

 

I've been surprised at how many ladybirds are out and about already this year.
They seem to be everywhere.
Maybe there's a aphid plague on the way this year.

Anyone old enough to remember the summer we had when there was a ladybird invasion?
There were thousands of them everywhere

 

Definitely more about. But that should be good news for gardeners plagued annually with blackfly.

 

I have been spotting lovely ladybirds for weeks now my garden has plenty of them for which I am eternally grateful

 

Spotted the first one this year - yesterday, apart from the little one that my daughter found a couple of weeks ago in her bedroom. I sometimes see them hiding in the clematis stems.

I don't grow a lot of plants that attract aphids though. We don't really get them until the sweet peas are growing actively which is another month away at least. The birds [blue tits mainly] tend to get most of the aphids when there's a bit of an explosion.

 

I think the whole lady bird population breed in my summer house every year I opened the doors end of March to find around 200 inside this is just a photo of a small amount they were everywhere

 

Seem to be an awful lot of them around this year, and for some weeks now.
@Pete8 - it was the heatwave summer of 1976, if we're thinking about the same ladybird invasion

 

I remember the 1976 invasion, but it was 1995 that we had a plague of them around here @AdrianBg .
Soon as you went outside you got nipped and were killing hundreds every step you took - very weird.
The YouTube clip I linked to in the above post showed how many there were in the south-east.