ant nuptials

My childhood sugar-water/magnifying glass memories have been telling me that when the mounds of ant-earth get that big it's gonna happen.  It did, so today I was excited by the ants.  Some things just don't change.

Today the combination of warmth and humidity triggered the ants into action.  They have been waiting  for the conditions to be just right to take to the sky in a mass mating flight.  In the garden and across London, countless fat-bodied virgin-queens synchronised their departures to take the air with equally countless small winged males.  As they rush to the top of grass stalks for lift off, the nests swarm with frantic workers.  The slightest disturbance drives them into a frenzy - they bravely attack legs.   

By simultaneously launching en-masse the odds are improved for a lucky few to avoid the army of hungry beaks and mouths all ready to take a toll (the wren was busy).  After mating, the female ants  drop to the ground (the males soon die), chew their own wings off and frantically search for a place to dig.  If lucky and on soft ground they soon disappear underground, where if nothing gets them, they  excavate a small cavity, the beginnings of a new nest.  They survive by re-absorbing their redundant wing muscles, just living off these reserves as they raise the first few workers.  The first workers will leave the nest the following spring to search for food.  A new colony will take years to grow to maturity and to produce the fertile winged forms.  With lots of luck the queens may live for 20 years or more.  

Good luck my beauties! 

greedy pig's and the first ant

The blackthorn trees were full of wood pigeons today wobbling and flapping like fat tightrope artistes.  They were stuffing their beaks with the tiny pre-fruits left from the just finished blossom.  It no wonder we don't see many sloes come autumn.  

I like wood pigeons and their comical ways.  A serious pest of countryside crops they have huge appetites for greens and will strip cabbages bare in no time.  In town they eat the usual bread and kebabs but still go for greens in a big way.  In the garden each summer they turn one of the elder trees leaves to lace, but surprisingly won't touch any other elder growing here.  I've noticed this elsewhere with two seemingly identical walnut trees growing next to each other in Clerkenwell, one is tall and proud, the other almost weeping from years of pigeon pruning. What the difference is between tree to tree I don't know but they eat the same trees year on year.

They are larger than feral pigeons with a distinctive white patch on each side of their neck and beautiful lilac, grey and white plumage.  I stood within six feet watching them feeding and they just kept a beady yellow eye on me.  Their country cousins would have been long gone being very, very wary.  They have to be or they are soon pie filling!

This is the first ant I've seen this year.  A common black ant making the most of the sunshine  climbing a bergenia stalk (Ballawley, a new variety here - very nice green 'eye' highlighting the bud) hunting nectar and looking for aphids to milk.  

I watched it's shiny black busy-ness and felt good.  Ants make me cheerful.