Sitting out in the sunny garden today, Anna noticed a ladybird. A closer look and a little research in my field guide and the web, has revealed that this was no ordinary ladybird....
Our ladybird was in fact a HARLEQUIN LADYBIRD. (It has many names - the MULTCOLOURED ASIAN LADYBIRD being another, lets just call it by its Latin name - Harmonia axyridis.
This is the ladybird introduced to North America as a biological control of aphid populations. It has since become a terrible pest in the USA, on account of its voracious appetite and rapid population spread. It dealt with the aphid population ok, and effectively started eating everything else, and outcompeted all the native ladybirds.
The first site of one of these little monsters in Britain came in the summer of 2004, in a pub beer garden in Essex, then a cemetary in Tottenham.
Its fair to say it has been spreading rapidly - its certainly made it to Reading!
Look out for it - it is now our largest ladybird, and although very variable in colouration and number of spots, it tends to be more orange than our common red "Seven Spot Ladybird" with often, 19 spots, and a distinctive triangular white mark on its "face".
A very beautiful bug with a dark side...!
NB. (23/04/07), just thought I'd let you know where the LADYBIRD (Or LADYBUG as its more commonly known worldwide) gets its name. The Virgin Mary ("Our Lady") was often depicted wearing a red shawl (the same colour as the common ladybirds' wingcases or "elytra"), and the seven dark spots on the red elytra (the 7 spot laybird being our most common species) were meant to represent "The seven Joys or Seven Sorrows", hence the "LADY"Bird.
Make of that what you will. I'm not that impressed really.
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