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Are these going to be Ladybirds?

Pete.8Pete.8 Posts: 11,340
in Wildlife gardening
Over the last few weeks I'm very pleased to see my garden infested with ladybirds. They seem to be everywhere - which is wonderful.
I'm also finding hundreds of these stuck onto a wide variety of surfaces.
They are attached by what looks like a little suction pad.
The ones on this brick have been there at least a week now.



Billericay - Essex

Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit.
Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.

Posts

  • DovefromaboveDovefromabove Posts: 88,147
    YES!!! 🐞 🐞 🐞 

    Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.





  • Pete.8Pete.8 Posts: 11,340
    Phew! Thanks Dove :)
    All I need now is some aphids 😁

    Billericay - Essex

    Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit.
    Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.
  • BijdezeeBijdezee Posts: 1,484
    Send them here, I've got loads of food for them and never enough ladybirds. 
  • herbaceousherbaceous Posts: 2,318
    That could be a harlequin I think but I'm definitely not a bug person, there was a survey a few years ago on the BBC and that looks very familiar.
    "The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it."  Sir Terry Pratchett
  • Papi JoPapi Jo Posts: 4,254
    Some good photos of the Harlequin ladybird pupa at this page: https://www.aboutanimals.com/insect/harlequin-ladybird/

  • tui34tui34 Posts: 3,493
    @Pete.8  I have a few on my Wisteria I could donate!!!  I have built a ladybird house with Eucalyptus "knobs" that I brought back from Australia.  I hope it is being inhabited - I keep forgetting to look!
    A good hoeing is worth two waterings.

  • Pete.8Pete.8 Posts: 11,340
    Interesting article PJ - hope they're not Harlequins, but what will be, will be.
    I can't recall ever seeing so many Ladybirds and whilst I recognize the juvenile form I've not noticed them pupating before. They are even dotted around the aluminium frame of my greenhouse - which gets very hot in the sun
    The only plants I can see that have aphids this year are the tops of my blackcurrants and a couple of the roses. Lupins have already been mullered by woolly aphids.
    If they ate slugs they'd have an almost unlimited supply

    Billericay - Essex

    Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit.
    Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.
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