The ladybirds we are all used to seeing are often red with black spots, sometimes black with red spots and occasionally yellow with black spots, all shiny. There is another group of smaller ladybirds which are mostly unspotted and not shiny, known as inconspicuous ladybirds or micro ladybirds. They are more difficult to find and often go unnoticed. In the past few days I have come across four of them and have been learning how to photograph them. The most recent find was Scymnus nigrinus which is rare with only a handful of UK records, mostly from East Anglia. I found about ten in a group of small Scots pine trees only a few miles from here. Scymnus nigrinus is very small and is black and so is not an easy subject to photograph. I used a small floating frame in a technique which holds the ladybird between two very thin plastic films without harming it, described in a new book Micro ladybirds of Britain and Ireland by Maria Justamond and David W.Williams. This has the advantage of allowing a good view of the underside as in many of the micro ladybirds the underneath features help with identification. I found the most difficult thing was avoiding reflections from the flash on the plastic and dealing with the very shallow depth of field when looking from the top. Here is how I got on.
So, not too bad considering the ladybird is only about 2mm long and the photos are taken through a plastic film. This is the habitat.
In the same trees I found two Scymnus suturalis. This is another conifer specialist and is even smaller than S. nigrinus.
There is a fashion for giving all ladybirds an English name in addition to their scientific binomial. Scymnus nigrinus, not surprisingly, is also known as the Black Ladybird although some of the others have multiple names which don't always make much sense.
A few days earlier I found two other micro ladybirds in my mother's garden in Northamptonshire. It was very hot and I hadn't taken the floating frame so I had only a few moments before each of them flew off. The first was Rhyzobius chrysomeloides, a.k.a. Arboreal Ladybird, Epaulet Ladybird, Round-keeled Rhyzobius, etc.
And then Rhyzobious lophanthe (Bristly Ladybird). This one was brought in from Australia to control scale insects but has since become naturalised.
Other micro ladybirds I have seen before are Rhyzobius forestieri, also Australian and also from Mum's garden,
and Coccidula rufa, the Red Marsh Ladybird, usually found in waterside vegetation and damp grassland. It lives by a pond in the golf course about 300m away from here.
There are plenty more to look out for, but not so many up in this part of the country.