I came across a 2 spot ladybird today on the way home (above, being checked by a garden ant). This ladybird species seems to have been the main loser in the Harlequin ladybird invasion, with a
44% decline since the harlequin arrived. They share habitat, and the small size of the 2 spot makes it easy prey of the harlequin when in the larval stage. The future does not bode well for the 2 spot. The same stretch of road where we found the lone 2 spot is a Harlequin hotspot: today there were tens of active harlequins, and we counted not one...
not two...
not three...
but five pairs mating.
1 comment:
Snap!
I also met up with a 2-spot today, along with an Adonis and just one rather unhealthy looking Harley, on the walls of my local bus stop here in S. Yorks.
2 weeks or so ago, in the garden of the Freud Museum in North London - where I had gone to see the Louise Bourgeois exhibition. I came across one of the "red on black" 2-spots - they look like a much oversized Kidney-spot.
It is a good year for Kidney-spots, I am seeing lots of them both in the South East and in Yorkshire.
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