Some shots from September found languishing on my hard drive.  I chose to use a high key look for these images, to capture a sense of the delicacy of the ladybird’s acrobatics on dry grass stems in my garden.

This beetle is a harlequin ladybird, or harmonia axyridis.  The harlequin was brought from Asia into America and Europe as a form of biological control and it spread quickly, arriving in the UK in 2004.  It has since caused a rapid decline in indigenous species of ladybird.

My own observations, for what they’re worth, bear this out; I rarely see anything but harlequins in my garden now.  Pesky things.  That doesn’t stop me photographing them though…