Watching Fairburn Ings being engulfed by flood water always makes me a little anxious about how our wildlife can possibly survive the devastation. However, we’ve seen plenty of amazing feats at Fairburn in the past, from swans building up their nests in sync with rapidly rising water levels, to entire coot nests being washed downstream, and the chicks successfully hatching days later.
Our latest tale of survival comes from a tiny ladybird. While repairing some of the damage from the floods at Pickup Hide I noticed the handrails were a looking a little busy with beetles. On closer inspection most of these turned out to be Water Ladybirds, one of the ladybird species you’re less likely to see out and about, as they are normally found living out in our wetlands on bulrushes and reeds. At this time of year they are a pale buff colour, and tuck themselves into the hollow stems of bulrushes, or between a leaf and stem to endure the winter months. Into spring they get their bright red warning colour, and move onto green wetland vegetation to look for tasty aphids.
Living near water is always a tad risky, so these little ladybirds (they’re only 3-4mm long, that’s about half the size of the common 7-spot ladybirds you’re probably more familiar with) have evolved a rather nifty way of coping with the rising flood waters; they can swim! When the water levels start to rise, they can float happily along in the current until they find a new plant. Except in this case they didn’t find a new plant, they found Pickup Hide. I’m not sure if they’ll hang around in the nooks and crannies of Pickup’s handrails now that the flood water has receded, or head back out to spend the winter in our wetlands, but it was reassuring to see that these ladybirds were able to cope with the floods at Fairburn.
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Water ladybirds making use of available nooks and crannies at Pickup Hide
Water ladybird on a handrail at Pickup Hide