Leah and I bought some plants yesterday and planted them this afternoon. There were quite a few yellowjackets and wasps flying around as I worked outside, and I kept thinking they were lighting on the back of my neck. It turned out it wasn’t yellowjackets or wasps, it was ladybugs.
Ladybugs swarming around the front door
All those black spots are ladybugs. Our house is painted a medium gray, but the area around the front door is white. There were some ladybugs on the siding, but far more on the white area around the door. I assumed from this that they are attracted to lighter colors, and at least one Web site confirmed that idea. They were all over the white garage doors and frames, but not inside the garage. All afternoon we had to use the garage to leave or reenter the house so we wouldn’t let all the ladybugs in the front door.
This is a closer shot of a ladybug at bottom right.
Ladybug and friend
There are two things about this photo to notice. One is the orange spots all over the railing. I think those are blood spots. If you have picked up a ladybug, you might have ended up with some of this on your hand. They release blood when they are stressed. The other thing is the bug at top left. I think this is actually an Asian lady beetle. Instead of the bright red of a ladybug, it has a more yellowish color. I noticed a fair number of them in addition to genuine ladybugs.
Today was the first day we have seen ladybugs swarming. In fact, they weren’t around until about mid-afternoon, and then suddenly they were everywhere. Later in the evening, many of them had dispersed. I hope they found a nice, warm place to overwinter, and I hope that place is not our attic.
After I finished planting, I had some leftover dirt, so I took it into the back where I’m trying to make a level path across our septic leach field. I had placed some rocks as a little retaining wall, and I wanted to move them and widen the path. When I moved the last rock, this is what I found.
Another lady
You can barely see the red marking on her abdomen. When I first uncovered her, the hour-glass shape was visible, but by the time I got back with my camera, she had moved. I have found enough black widows around the yard that I’m careful when I turn over rocks or old boards. Finding one no longer startles me, but I am always appreciative of its beauty. That round, shiny, black abdomen is hard to mistake, even when you can’t see the red hourglass.
I usually leave them alone. In this case, I used a shove shovel to move her along with the rock she was using as her lair to a different place. I hope she finds a nice place to spend the winter, too, but not in our house.
We often get out to our cabin to find a hatch or swarm of lady bugs, inside. We take out as many as we can, but that hardly makes a dent in their doomed numbers. Seems like these come in the spring for us, but I could be mistaken.
Could they have been inside since late fall and you’re just seeing them in spring?
When I lived in Alabama I once gathered about a half a paper grocery bag of ladybugs from my attic and took them outside. I didn’t vacuum as recommended, so I ended up leaving quite a few. One Web site I looked at said many die from dehydration in attics because it’s too dry inside most houses for them to survive.
So odd. I’ve never seen a ladybug swarm. I wonder if it’s because everything is stained dark and so I have nothing contrasty to view them against? Or maybe swarms are the stuff of human neighborhoods, which we don’t have? (Apparently not, given Pablo’s testimony.)
Black widow ladies are among those that I can also do without. Was it tarantulas or black widows that urban legend had inhabiting the mattress?
Wayne – The ladybugs were definitely attracted to the white area around our front door as opposed to any other place on the house. It was so obvious that I assumed they were attracted to lighter areas even before I read about it online. I wonder what it is about lighter colors that would attract them to it. As to black widows, I tolerate them but I am careful outside. I would not be so tolerant if they were in our mattress.
Oh wow this post reminds me of the one time Roger and I did see a ladybug swarm. It was in the fall 2009, here in the foothills. We were out househunting, and we came upon this huge swarm of them. They were everywhere in the low brush and bushes. I did a post with a photo. Thank you for the reminder, makes me want to look around to see if they’re here now. It was almost four years ago to the day!
http://newdharmabums.blogspot.com/2009/10/covered-bridge-and-ladybugs.html
I’m with you on the Black Widow spider, I don’t mind seeing them outside, especially if they’re someplace I don’t dig around in. I did have one once under my desk at work at UC Santa Cruz. That was not so much fun. The campus sent someone who came and killed every bug inside the building.
Robin – Thanks for the link to your post. That was a great picture of ladybugs. You may not have noticed, but the ladybug in my picture is actually a little out of focus. Leah and I have been having problems, especially focus problems, with the little point-and-shoot I sometimes use. It looked like a good one — it’s a Nikon — but I really, really don’t like it. It also has such a shutter lag that it’s almost impossible to take a picture of anything that might move within, say, three seconds of the time you press the shutter.
I discovered a misspelling in the last paragraph. In case anyone wondered, I used a “shovel” to move the black widow, not a “shove”.
Wait until you get an infestation of non-native, introduced marmorated stinkbugs, which we’re experiencing right now here in the northern Piedmont. The stinkbugs do the same sort of swarming, but they’re larger, brown, and emit a distinctly unpleasant odor when disturbed.
I hope we never get that. I see various bugs around here that resemble the marmorated stinkbugs, at least as the wiki shows them, but I’m not sure what they actually are. I’ll have to look more carefully the next time.