sleepy sheild bug

[urban_greenwatch]

Off gardening at my friend Melanie's, I found this pretty shield bug huddled against my cooling mug of tea. Sheild bugs are vegetarians, sap-suckers, and generally seen as a bit of a pest (although there's one in New Zealand that's a caterpillar sucker) but I think they look cheerful and handsome. It could be the amusingly-named Acanthosoma haemorrhoidale, the hawthorn shield bug, or a birch shield bug, but from the location, it's probably a Juniper Shield Bug -- like lots of people with overlooked gardens, Melanie has conifers sheilding the borders of her garden, and Juniper Sheild Bugs love that. I remember one christmas, I decided to deck the halls with boughs of lelandii (that being what I had). For the next week, sheild bugs were sleepily popping out of the dense branches and crawling around the sitting room. Lelandii are brutes, but the dense vegetation shelters small birds from predators, and provides a safe and surprisingly warm space for hibernating insects; in spring, watch out for ladybirds creeping out from under them.