General Chat

Time of the year again, folks. Look for it - find it - record it. Same as we did 12 months ago. Frog spawn; Peacock butterfly; Seven-spot ladybird; Red-tailed bumblebee; Swift; Hawthorn flowering. Find all you need to know on www(.)bbc(.)co(.)uk(.)/nature/animals/wildbritain/springwatch/record Go on, join in, Brian, ; < O )

Okay, I'll start......my little amphibious rascals are at it! I'd almost given up on 'em, but they all suddenly appeared from nowhere and are busily doing you-know-what!! Brian, ; < O )

yea. my 3yr old went out the other day and was yelling that his friends the ladybirds had come back to him. it's quite sweet really. but the question is where do they go for winter? amy

Dunno......unless they hybernate or pupate. Bill Oddie's probably the best person to ask about that. Brian, ; < O )

Put ...Ladybird.... into the search box. There was a thread about them on here last year.

Picking up on Gwyneth's point, I did some rummaging around. I think she may have been referring to a warning about 'alien' ladybirds.....so I did some more rummaging. Came up with this: Harlequin ladybirds: these little creatures are something of a menace to the native British aphids and other insects. 'They threaten lacewings and other beneficial native insects such as our own ladybirds' is a quote from a feature on them in Gardensearch(.)co(.)uk Further advice is that 'Gardeners are urged to be on the look out for them. They may over-winter in houses or outbuildings'. They are classified as voracious predators. They come in a number of guises: black with red spots; orange or yellow with many black spots, or in some cases, they are spotless - pure black. Should you find any of these little blighters you are asked to put them in a small, dry box or similar, such as a plastic film tube, and send them off to a laboratory in Cambridge (refer to the above website). Brian, ; < O )

We've got both postcards to fill in but haven't found any of the animals or insects on either yet! We would probably have had frogspawn by now had our pond not leaked which meant we had to take our breeding frogs (having checked they were healthy and native first) to a local pond. Angela

bum! saw my first ladybird of the new year today...never occured to me to count how many sopts it had lol

; < O )

Nudge

Had my first Peacock buttterfly in Tonbridge this morning! Lx

Brian had some of those little monsters you were referring to last year - they don 'alf give you gip as they leave what looks like flea bites - I had to have special cream off the doc. Haven't notice any lb's or the others yet just lots of birds courting - (mutters ) dirty little devils - but hey the outcome is wonderful when all the young have fledged and coming to the feeders in the garden - wey ho can't wait. Dorothy