Ladybugs Gatherings

My family is not a family that sits around and lounges when we get together for holidays, as much as I may try to passive aggressively get this to be the case. No, we are a family who starts the day off with a multi-mile hike up and down rocky trails near.  This is exactly what we did yesterday after all of our out of towners arrived the day before.

On the hike we encountered something pretty crazy and incredible, something that I now know (after some research) was ladybug hibernation!  Something that, if they weren't ladybugs, looks like the beginning of a horror movie - though I was alone in this assessment. 

As we came around a corner there were some fallen logs, bathed in sun and absolutely covered in thousands of ladybugs.  This morning I looked up what could be happening and found the following information.

Ladybug adults hibernate, usually gathering in large aggregations in protected places.
As days get shorter and temperatures fall, ladybugs seek shelter behind bark, under leaves, or in other protected locations. Thousands of ladybugs may gather in the same location, taking advantage of the collective warmth of a colony. Asian multicolored ladybugs, an invasive species in North America, has earned a reputation as a home invader. These beetles tend to move indoors for winter, where they can become a nuisance in people's houses. Convergent ladybugs gather in the mountains in such numbers that collectors can scoop them up by the bucket.

This must be what we were seeing but it was pretty incredible up close.  Check out the video we got below.