Two different species of ants trying to make sense of their paths as they run into each other. No hostility I think, but there does seem to be a bit of confusion. My moving the camera all over the place doesn’t help. But neat: something we haven’t seen before.
Category: Insects
Grand entrance
We have seen many cutter ant trails and ant hills, but never a grand entrance like this that Syd spotted today!
Never seen before…
We often see fascinating tracks in the sand – lizards, beetles, birds – but this track was unlike any we’d seen before. And, luckily, we didn’t have to guess what made it (note how it almost gets blown off track by the wind at 0:23).
Carpenters
In addition to leaf-cutter ants, the woods have carpenter ants. We’ve seen some in weakened trees, but I had never seen how much sawdust they produced. If ants are higher in the tree, sawdust will likely blow away before it reached the ground. So I found this pile impressive, and was reminded why I’m glad not to live in a wooden house.
Ants and acacia
Ants are, of course, amazing. What’s unusual about this trail is that we could actually find the end of it; usually the trails disappear in the undergrowth, often after a far greater distance than this.
Regardless, the question remains: why weren’t they harvesting the closer acacia bush?
No bets just yet, please
High-speed ant hill…
…and a gratuitous (but funny) comment about local drivers.
Spider web remnants
The wind chimes
Thanks for asking, but…
…no, not a good night’s sleep. Those are fresh blood spots on the wall above the bed, from nocturnal mosquito-hunting.
The technique is to hold a flashlight parallel to the wall then move it away from and back towards the wall. The mosquitoes’ shadows give them away even when you can barely see them otherwise.
Cutter ants harvesting acacia flowers
Busy little ants harvesting acacia flowers, with a brief interruption from Jordan.