Jacky Winter and the Flying Ants

This sounds like a title for a children’s adventure book. It’s really just an observation on some interesting behaviour. The Jacky Winter (Microeca fascinans) is not common around the Strath Creek – Yea district, but is occasionally observed. It is a bird of farmland, woodland, dry scrub. They have no distinguishing marks except the tail has white feathers down each side (which I could not get the bird to flaunt in these photos). In Spring their call goes ‘peter-peter-peter-peter’.

I saw 4 of these birds engaging in typical behaviour recently. They were all sitting on fenceposts and sallying out to catch flying insects then returning to their posts. What was the occasion? It is flying ant time! The air had many flying ants and these insectivorous little robins were loving it.

Once a year at the end of summer, ants and termites produce swarms of winged females and males known as alates, called queens and drones respectively. They come pouring out of the nest and hit the air in a nuptial flight. While in the air, a queen and a drone will clasp each other, and fall to the ground to start a new colony. In termites, this is done by biting off each other’s wings, whereas ant alates keep their wings (but the drones die when their work is done). There are thousands of species of ants and I do not know which species these black ants are. Different species time their flight according to warmth, humidity, day-length; some are spectacular, all are wonderful.

As well as reproducing the colony – only one couple needs to be successful for that!- this proliferation of flying protein is a bumper provision for the ecosystem, feeding all manner of spiders, birds, reptiles, bats, predatory insects.

Sometimes the overproduction of seeds or eggs or alates in nature seems so generous and helpful to other species, it makes one question the view which sees nature as highly competitive and only concerned with survival of the fittest. There is a strong sense of cooperation and mutual care sometimes.
Humans, take note!