I found a winged, black ant in the garden last week. The child inside me said "Flying Ants Day!" but there was no sign of any others.
I found a winged, black ant in the garden last week. The child inside me said "Flying Ants Day!" but there was no sign of any others. Perhaps it had just left the nest prematurely to test the atmospheric humidity, or was impatiently hoping to find some other winged ants which had also broken out early.
Flying Ants Day is a celebratory event for black ants, Lasius niger. Some people see it as the ants' wedding day, but it's more of a one-night-stand, really, a giant mating ritual where daughter queens and males emerge en masse and fly in the air to mate, before the females drop their wings and search for new digs and the males crawl off to die. The day, usually in late-July, is timed perfectly to ensure optimum weather conditions for the event. Hot and humid is best, apparently.
In any one area, ants from thousands of nests will take to the skies at once, forming large, mating swarms. It's exciting, not least for insect-eating birds, which have rich pickings for a day or two. Of the bird species that take advantage of Flying Ants Day, starlings, swifts and sparrows are in serious decline. According to the RSPB, swifts have declined by a third in recent years, house sparrows by almost 60% since 1979 and starlings by almost 75%. One of the reasons cited for such declines is a lack of insect food. While sparrows and starlings have adapted to use garden bird feeders, insects form a large part of their diet and their young are almost exclusively fed on insects. And you'll never find swifts on your fat balls.
(If you hear swifts screaming above you in the evening, the RSPB would love to hear about it.)
Gardeners aren't traditionally fans of insects, except pretty ones, like butterflies and bees. They're not made welcome in areas of intensively managed agriculture, either. But these 'pests' form an important part of the food chain and many species of bird and bat rely on them. Sadly, a common way of dealing with ants is to pour boiling water over the nest. I wonder how many ant mating rituals will be cut short, and how many swifts, sparrows and starlings will be denied a dinner at the hands of gardeners with kettles of boiling water this year.
So Flying Ants Day is important, not just for broody ants but for our declining bird species, too. I'm hoping this year's event takes place on a weekend, so I can witness it in full swing. In the meantime I'm finding out how to provide the right conditions for the latest wildlife gardener's accessory: an ant hill.
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