Lack of Ladybirds

I don't know if you can see this.

www.ladybird-survey.org/downloads/ladybird_larvae.pdf

There's no point in showing the first stage, which is what I mostly see, as they are little more than black pinheads that can move! Our bathroom floor is level with the house eaves, I think there must be a gap there and they mostly escape out through it, but many come back up into the house.

When they appear, they are just tiny little black dots all over the bathroom windowsill. I used to wonder what they were. Now I kill off all the spiders in the bathroom to give them a fighting chance. We have exposed floors in that bathroom, I think they overwinter under there.

How lovely!

I have loads here, they are all in East Anglia. They are currently having babies in my bathroom blind roll upstairs, which they do every year. I just leave them to it, heaven only knows where they all go but every now and then we have ladybirds all over the place.

But there certainly have been fewer around this year...

I remember that, Mishap, although I don't recall them biting. They covered the bushes at the side of the road I travelled to work - they looked just like berries!

I think they must have decamped to my house because we've had quite a few even now -not necessarily the red ones with black spots though

There's one hibernating on my bedroom nets - might take him into the greenhouse where there may be some greenflies to feast on if he wakes up!

Does anybody remember the plague of ladybirds in 1976 (I think) - no-one loved them then - they were starving and would bite humans. I remember a huge swathe of millions of them along the tideline on a Somerset beach - all dead and piled up in a great bank - extraordinary.