Ladybirds

pansyface

For everyone who thought that there was a dearth of ladybirds, I now know where they are. Inside the casement window frames of my house. Plagued with bluebottles that always try and hibernate in the house and which had begun their annual search for a quiet spot, I opened one of the living room windows yesterday evening to let them out. As I did so, about fifty ladybirds tumbled from the top of the window and landed in my hair, on the windowsill, on the carpet and between the grille slats of the radiator. They then started to crawl and fly all over the room. It was pouring with rain and I couldn't close the window because about another fifty had woken up and begun to wander around within the window frame and I didn't want to shut the window on their bodies. as fast as I threw one out into the garden another flew back in. Needless to say, my hubby came into the room to find his deranged wife with ladybirds walking up and down her face, the carpet and windowsill covered in rain and a couple of bemused animals watching the performance like unimpressed theatre critics. If that was one window in one room, I think I must be holding the National Collection of ladybirds just now. Anyone else found this number roosting?

Dovefromabove

This might be of interest http://www.gardenersworld.com/blogs/wildlife/harlequin-ladybirds/3083.html

 

pansyface

Thank you for that, Dove. I'm not confident enough to say whether mine, or some of mine, are harlequin ladybirds. To my eye they look too similar to the native ones, in many cases, for me to decide. And I can't get down low enough to inspect the colour of their legs.



All mine were alive and kicking. So I'm just going to leave them alone and let them sort it out for themselves.



I never did get rid of the bluebottles that set the whole thing off. They are still crawling around all over the windows.



All my smilies have disappeared though.

treehugger80

easy way to tell, all native ladybirds have black legs, harlequins have brown legs

LesleyK

No wonder you lost your smilies pansyface.  I'd be fed up to be left with the bluebottles.  I love your description of  being watched by bemused animals.

treehugger80 I imagine your eyesight is a lot better than mine.  I can get the wrong coloured trousers out of the wardrobe during the dark months

ginagibbs

We had the same thing happen in our kitchen casement window for the last 2 years, and about the same quantity. Do you have an old house Pansy?

pansyface

Yes, an old house. Loved by every living creature you could imagine and often quite a few dead ones as well.



Smilies have done a runner so

ginagibbs

We have our fair share of mice, our  high skirting boards have perfect Tom and Jerry mouse entrances, we often find dog biscuits wedged in them where they have tried to steal them but are too big for the hole (1840's house)

pansyface

Now there is something definitely odd going on here. In my settings, smilies are turned on as pictures but there is no tool bar at the top of this box for me to use them. So yesterday I typed in a colon and a bracket to make a smiley and today it has "ripened" into a yellow smiley image. How weird is that?

ginagibbs

Dovefromabove

When I'm using the Basic Editor option, I can make some (but not many) smilies using punctuation and they show as proper emoticons, so it sounds as if your settings are behaving as if you're on Basic Edit when you're not.  How strange