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Harlequin ladybirds

I woke up last Sunday to an minor infestation of ladybirds in my bedroom window (12). Normally this wouldn't bother me, but on inspection I thought they might be Harlequins. Now I know they are as this morning there's a couple of the classic black ones. I also checked out and filled in the survey on http://www.harlequin-survey.org/default.htm

As a gardener with wildlife to the forefront of my mind, these, and grey squirrels create a dilemma for me (and slugs, but that's a whole other story). I know they're aliens and invasive, but so are lots of plants we've all come to love, grow from seed, propagate, or buy over the years.

Who amongst us can put our hands up to having a truly native garden?

Recent surveys say that birds and insects still thrive on alien plants. These ladybirds will still eat aphids.

Isn't it that we still plant and not concrete over that's the important thing?

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  • ObelixxObelixx Posts: 30,064

    Those laydybirds also eat the native ladybirds which is not so good.

    It's not quite the same as introducing plants from elsewhere that provide food and/or shelter for native fauna as do many introduced garden plants.  The problems with plants come when they invade countryside like Himalayan balsam or Japanese kntweed or those big purple rhododendrons and assorted aquatic plants which then squeeze out native plants and the associated fauna that feeds or shelters in them.

    A completely native garden in my area wuld be full of couch grass, creeping buttercup, thistles, dock, nettles, marsh garss, ground ivy, horsetail with maybe willows, hawthorn and hazel.    Deadly boring and not exactly bee friendly.

    As it is, I have a huge range of bees and other insects and lots of birds because I grow a wide range of plants which flower at various times of the year thus providing nectar for insects and colour for me and a happy buzz of activity in all but the coldest months when the garden is animated by all the birds that visit my feeders filled with non native peanuts and seed mixes.

    Vendée - 20kms from Atlantic coast.
    "The price good men (and women) pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men (and women)."
    Plato
  • Thanks Obelixx. They've all been vacuumed up, though I'm sure there's likely to be a lot more where they came from. Will just need to be vigilant this year image

  • chickychicky Posts: 10,409

    We have so many here (mostly in the window framesimage) that destroying them would be futile - and they eat the aphids just as well as the natives, so they are tolerated, if not warmly welcomed.  Its a bit like the grey squirrels - I'd rather see reds, but that is now a pipe dream here, so would rather have grey than none at allimage.  Would be awful if nothing was bounding round the trees, or playing acrobatics with the bird feeders!

  • I agree with you Chicky - there's no point in destroying the Harlequins, they're established here now and at least they eat aphids.


    Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.





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