Blog mioojo

Did you know about Flying Ant Day? I certainly didn't and while I always think that you should be a little careful about things you read on Wikipedia, I'm happy to accept this as genuine 100% fact.

I'm wittering on this topic as today was Flying Ant Day here in Villagarcia and unlike past years when I've noticed large numbers of flying ants suddenly appear, I actually thought to find out a little more about flying ants.

I also took the opportunity to try and photograph them. Unfortunately they don't stay still. They also appear to be very bad at flying, which is rather unfortunate for a creature with the word 'flying' in its name, and they spent an innumerable amount of time trying to take off. At least I'm assuming that they were trying to take off. I can't believe that they were all deliberately flipping themselves over onto their backs and then struggling to right themselves.

Later on today, I noticed that some opportunistic ants had decided to pick off some of the make flying ants and take them home for a meal, but not in the friendly context. This reminded me of a day earlier this year when I witnessed one ant colony being devastated by an attack from another colony. As I watched the event unfold in miniature before my macro lens, I didn't appreciate just how gruesome and horrific it really was. You can see the full Two Tribes set at my Flickr account and I know that this will be the closest I ever get to war photography.