Last week I went for a walk outside in the sunny but cold Spring weather with my nephew, and we met this little friend who probably just woke up from Winter sleep:

It turned out my nephew (who’s 8) knew a lot more than me about these creatures, and he told me that it’s called the 7-spot ladybird. Also that people think the dots tell the age, but they don’t. All the ladybugs of this kind have 7 dots.

We agreed that this bug probably thought that it had climbed a real mountain, because it was sitting on a rock that seemed big compared to a ladybug.

I mainly know the English word for this little bug as “ladybug”, but have also heard “ladybird”. Some quick doodling tells me that “ladybug” is the American English version, and the British normally call it “ladybird”. In Danish it’s called “mariehøne” which literally translated to English means Mary/Marie hen, so apparently the Danes agree that the bug is a kind of bird…