A natural miracle happened a short while ago. It's a hot summer night here in Seattle, and two ladybugs flew in my open window. Both of them had black wing covers, with one perfect, ruby-red circle on each wing cover. I've never seen any ladybugs like that around here. I've seen the orange and black kind, that eat aphids in your garden. I've seen them yellow and black, and kind of pinkish cream and black spots. But I've never seen one that's black with red spots, not even in Texas, where I saw the black and orange spotted ones. I consider this a minor miracle, though of a perfectly natural kind. Serendipitous. Should I write a poem about it?
Anne G
Redheaded Neanderlady
This is a photoshopped version of something I found in National Geographic about the time I started researching
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3 comments:
Would this be your ladybug?
http://bugguide.net/node/view/13765
I love its common name.
This is my favourite insect ID site - I have a bit of an obsession about identifying the insects I see, and these guys are pretty comprehensive.
Bee:
Well, it' looks very similar, but according to the site, the distribution stops at the east slope of the Rocky Mountains. There are apparently two other similar species west of the Rockies, and on the West Coast. The difference is subtle. The ones I saw, were colored exactly the same, but their spots were perfectly round. The one I saw in your picture had rather "messy" spots, as if they were colored in by a small child. Still, I don't recall ever having seen such a ladybug before Monday night!
Anne G
Anne G
H. E. Jacques' manual on beetles lists some 25 species of the lady beetle, the coccinellidae.
I once wrote a short story based on the little poem, "Lady Bird, Lady bird..." with the heroine called Scarlet Red (like Snow White). Tried an experimental form, which was too prescious amd cutesy for words, almost, so you can imagine the reaction. There were some really cute conceits, though, I think. Irish tale tellers sometimes say a bird told them the story originally, so I had an old tom tell me this when I had been enjoyed a wee drop (in real life, I don't.)
Cheers
John GW
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