There are 15 different types of ladybirds in Ireland in varying shades of red and yellow. On the Biology.ie website, they are conducting a survey of ladybirds, so if you have one or more of them in your garden, be sure to fill out the survey. Last year, I had plenty of ladybirds, mainly because I also had plenty of nettles. This year, I weeded out the nettles as they appeared, and as a result, I have hardly any ladybirds this year. Therefore, next year, I’m going to have to cultivate a big patch of nettles just for the ladybirds (as a farmer’s son, I can hardly believe I just wrote that). Last year, I left the nettles until late summer, and as I cut them down, the ladybirds took shelter in a crop of sunflowers in the same part of the garden and continued to prosper. This year, the cold wet summer, and the gale that blew through Galway last week, laid waste to the sunflowers so the few ladybirds that have appeared are looking for a new home.
The picture above was taken a couple of weeks ago. It is of a two-spot ladybird (adalia bipunctata) on a sunflower leaf – the brown spots are bits of soil, flung there by myself as collateral damage from some over-enthusiastic and short-lived digging activity. It was taken using a powerful macro lens (180mm Sigma) which allows me to get close to little bugs without …er… bugging them.
Update (Aug 17th 2015) : in the week since I published the post above, there has been an explosion of 2-spot ladybirds in the garden. They have completely colonised the remaining sunflowers – they seem to prefer the ones that are in flower. Checking against last year’s record, both the progress of the sunflowers and the ladybirds seem to be about a month behind. There has even been an appearance of a 14-spot yellow ladybird, just like last year.