A loveliness of ladybirds...

The hot weather in Wales seems to suit the ladydids just fine this year. So with nothing else to do on such a lovely day I went on a ladybird hunt, just like the ones I enjoyed when I was a small boy.

We were always collecting something in our newspaper-lidded jam jars which we pricked with holes and carried around with strings we'd tied around the jar lip. If it wasn’t ladybirds it was grasshoppers, snails, beetles, centipedes, even tiny green frogs.

We’d wander for miles looking for specimens; turning over rocks, carefully parting the grass to watch for the leap of a hopper, or lying by the water looking for the flash of a frog.

Once collected and counted we’d let our miniature menageries go with a mixture of sadness and joy as the little creatures scampered away – very, very, slowly in the case of the snails.

I stuck to the garden for my Welsh ladybird safari, searching the pots and hedges, examining the walls and the trunks of trees. Within an hour or so I’d found over forty and then the heat, and the promise of an ice cold beer, brought my hunt to an end, so I set them free in the shade beneath a mock orange bush.

My very own loveliness of ladybirds, gone in an instant… but fun whilst it lasted.