The mystery of ladybirds' wings

The small birds were mostly lurking in the leaves and could only be photographed in the shadows. A Wren near the Henry Moore sculpture nattered irritably at a Magpie.

A Blue Tit explored a plane tree in the Dell looking for larvae cliunging to the underside of the leaves.

A young Great Tit by the bridge waited in a bush to be fed.

A Coal Tit at Mount Gate perched under the leaves of a buckthorn tree.

This Robin, one of the pair that have nested here, is looking quite worn while the other one of the pair, which I photographed yesterday, as as smart as ever. Presumably this is the female of the pair, frayed by sitting in a nest.

The female Blackcap at the bridge was keeping in a tree ...

... but one of her fledglings came out into the light.

A small group of Starlings had a wash on the edge of the Serpentine. They're gregarious birds and naturally do things together, and this also helps to increase their safety when they're in a vulnerable state.

A Pied Wagtail hunted in the grass beside the Round Pond. There are usually some Pied Wagtails here, and I think they nest in Kensington Palace, where the old brickwork provides suitable holes. I've seen them flying in and out at roof level.

The four surviving Mandarin ducklings were running along the edge looking for small water creatures in the pools thrown up by the waves.

It was quite windy, and the six Mallard ducklings huddled in the lee of their mother. (The wind was also keeping the Little Owls in their hole, so I didn't see them.)

There's a new brood of six Egyptian goslings at the Triangle.

There were some Wool Carder Bees, Anthidium manicatum, in the Rose Garden. They are less common in the park that the ginger Common Carders, Bombus pascuorum. The name 'carder' comes from their habit of teasing out plant fibres for their nests.

An interesting short video shot in slow motion by Duncan Campbell: a Buff-Tailed Bumblebee peacefully browsing on a Lamb's Ears flower knocked off by a small but aggressively territorial Wool Carder. This was happening constantly, but fortunately there are only a few Wool Carders so mostly the Buff-Tails can get on with their business.

If it was a dull day for birds it was quite a good one for beetles. This is a Dark Soldier Beetle, Cantharis fusca, in the grass on the hill leading up to the Round Pond.

A Rain Beetle, Pterostichus melanarius, ran across the path at Mount Gate.

A Harlequin Ladybird, Harmonia axyridis, flipped out its wings from their cases before flying off a lavender flower in the Rose Garden.

The hind wings are considerably larger than the elytra, that is the wing cases, which are modified and hardened forewings. They have to fold up to fit inside. I wondered how this is done, and found a paper giving a very full description of the process.

In short, the wings fold into a Z shape. When the elytra are raised the wings spring out ready for flight in 0.1 seconds thanks to hydraulic pressure in the wing veins. But hauling them back in is a slower process taking 2 seconds, which you have probably seen happening. The ladybird does this by closing its elytra and jiggling its abdomen back and forth. Its back has patches of small slanted spines which work like ratchets to gradually draw the wings into cover.