Ladybugs!!
 

OK, I've been sitting on these pictures long enough, I took them back in february and early march, and I was going to post them here, but I was hoping I could get some more impressive pictures. Every year the ladybugs hibernate in this one area down by the river. I'm not sure why they always go to that spot, but there's thousands of them. Anyway, last year I saw whole rocks and trunks of trees completely covered with them, but I didn't have a camera at the time. If there was such an impressive display this year, I must have missed it. Sorry they're so big, I really hated that I had to shrink the images down so much. They lost a lot of detail. If anyone wants to see the originals, they're 1200x1600 and about 400K each, but they're very impressive, I might be able to post them to my website at full size. They would make a cool wallpaper, except the pictures are so "noisy" it's hard to see icons against it.

http://linknoid.net/images/ladybug1.jpg

http://linknoid.net/images/ladybug2.jpg

Now that is a new pic for me to see. That is cool.

Re: Ladybugs!!
 

You have icons?

Some people think it would be better if my computer was just used to display wallpaper.

Your first link is broken for me, but the second pic is great. Shoot of a high-res version to me and I'll see what I can do.

Really nice.

Oops, link is working now.

Wow!

Fly away home, indeed!

OK, here's links to the original pictures. These are hosted by a friend over his DSL, so if it goes slow, it's probably his bandwidth dying, so be nice (and the above posted pictures are also hosted there too):

Ladybugs #1, ~350K
Ladybugs #2, ~500K

Damn fine and highly original pics, Linknoid. You win the daily prize, as far as I'm concerned.

So...ladybugs migrate, or what?

It's not migration. It's the yearly Ladybug LAN party. You just can't see their rigs because they're so tiny.

A shot I wish I had a camera for involved a drainage ditch behind my home 12 years ago. During the spring, when I would go out at night to put up the dogs, the porch light would be reflected back at me from hundreds of tiny pairs of eyes amongst the leaves. It seems there are this rather large and hairy spiders that lurk in that ditch, and the brightness of the porch light in the evening captures their attention in droves. And I thought animals were the only creatures with such reflective eyes...

Definitely Quality Images, as promised.

VERY cool. So many ladybugs in one place, must be extremely lucky!

(My mom absolutely adores ladybugs. Always has, but it's to the point where my sister and I are not permitted to buy her anything with a ladybug design on it any longer. Not that we listen to her, because we always find something different every year.)

I had read somewhere that ladybugs migrate by flying straight up, sometimes several thousand feet. There, the wind will carry them for a hundred miles or more.

I talked to someone today who has lived around here a lot longer than I have. I had assumed that the ladybugs must have all flown off, but she suggested that they probably went back underground since it's been getting cooler here at night, and even though I've never seen any at any time besides february and march, she insists they stick around all year long. So I guess I'll go ladybug hunting again, maybe they've moved somewhere else, or maybe they're just burrowed away in some warm spot.

<b>Don't waste his bandwidth!</b>

Here are mirrors on my server (with plenty of bandwidth to spare):

First image
Second image!

Damn, Dave, for the resident curmudgeon, you sure are a nice guy ...