| Ants
     Top to bottom: red ant, yellow meadow ant, small black ant© Top to bottom: Roger Key/English Nature, Roger Key/English Nature, John PontinAnts, like many of their close relatives, among the bees and wasps, are social insects. Their nests are less elaborate but their colonies are just as meticulously organised and devoted to the hatching of eggs and the nurture of the grubs when they hatch. They eat both plant and animal material, including seeds and fruit (and anything else with sugar) and dead insects. Although ants do little direct damage in a garden, their practice of 'farming' aphids for the sweet solution which they secrete, may make them unwelcome. Some birds appear to use the formic acid present in ants' bodies to cleanse themselves of small parasites. Many species will eat ants but the green woodpecker is an ant-feeding 'specialist: one very good reason to tolerate ants in your garden! When the new queens and their 'suitors' emerge from nests in a mysteriously co-ordinated way in a locality to produce the familiar 'flying ants', this provides a feast for birds such as swallows, house martins, starlings, swifts and even black-headed gulls. Common lizards eat both adult ants and their grubs as do common toads. PlantsCherry laurel PreyGreen tortoise beetle, Ladybirds PredatorsBirds, Black-headed gull, Carrion crow, Common lizard, Crevice spider, Great spotted woodpecker, Green woodpecker, Grey wagtail, House martin, House sparrow, Jackdaw, Jay, Kestrel, Lesser spotted woodpecker, Magpie, Pied wagtail, Rook, Starling, Swallow, Treecreeper, Wren, Xysticus cristatus AntsRed ant, Small black ant, Yellow meadow ant |
