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…