As I mentioned earlier I am staying in Liverpool and doing some house painting while Liz is in India.
On opening the windows I discovered a luxuriance of hibernating ladybirds. A plethora of these tiny creatures. By the time I took the picture above most had fled or scattered, but it gives you some idea of the numbers. In itself this was not particularly interesting, ladybirds like to spend the winter huddled together in a crowd. What was interesting however was the fact that the crowd consisted of at least four species of ladybird. I have never given much thought to multi-species hibernation before, but in this case some questions came to mind.
Here are three of them:
How do the ladybirds gather and select their winter home?
Do the various species communicate in some way, or do they arrive by chance?
What other animals practise multi-species hibernation?
So far I have no satisfactory answers and I can't give any good links.
But Rutland Council, rather than waste tax payers money on wheelie bins and the like, offer this free handy fact sheet on ladybirds. Its worth reading. For example, did you know:
Ladybirds are named after the Virgin Mary, also known as ‘Our Lady’,
often shown wearing a red cloak in old paintings. The seven spots
represent the Virgin’s seven joys and seven sorrows.
I should say that "killer" is a bit of an exaggeration, but ladybirds can nip you and excrete pungent yellow blood if messed with.
On opening the windows I discovered a luxuriance of hibernating ladybirds. A plethora of these tiny creatures. By the time I took the picture above most had fled or scattered, but it gives you some idea of the numbers. In itself this was not particularly interesting, ladybirds like to spend the winter huddled together in a crowd. What was interesting however was the fact that the crowd consisted of at least four species of ladybird. I have never given much thought to multi-species hibernation before, but in this case some questions came to mind.
Here are three of them:
How do the ladybirds gather and select their winter home?
Do the various species communicate in some way, or do they arrive by chance?
What other animals practise multi-species hibernation?
So far I have no satisfactory answers and I can't give any good links.
But Rutland Council, rather than waste tax payers money on wheelie bins and the like, offer this free handy fact sheet on ladybirds. Its worth reading. For example, did you know:
Ladybirds are named after the Virgin Mary, also known as ‘Our Lady’,
often shown wearing a red cloak in old paintings. The seven spots
represent the Virgin’s seven joys and seven sorrows.
I should say that "killer" is a bit of an exaggeration, but ladybirds can nip you and excrete pungent yellow blood if messed with.
ladybird_factsheet.pdf |
I won't bother you with pictures of newly painted doors, instead here are some blurry pictures from Lancaster Music Festival that I took with my ipod.