The hair-raising antics of flying ants

LAST Sunday week was Flying Ant Day on the Seven Heads of west Cork.

In the glorious weather, there was no question of “raindrops falling on my head”, as the song puts it. Instead it was flying ants alighting on my cranium, dozens of them, as I walked the cliffs over the sea. Happily, I didn’t have the same problems as my companions, who are less follically challenged than I am: ants became entangled in their luxuriant locks and the more they tried to brush them off the more entangled they became. I suggested going to a local stables where we could perhaps borrow a curry comb, but the recommendation was not appreciated.

Flying ants, the queens about half an inch long, were the bane of our neighbour in La Gomera in the Canary Islands. They came every year, but Maria, who was not young, had never become used to them. They would swarm beneath the outside light on her house in their tens of thousands and she would attack them with a broom or sometimes hose down the wall. In any case, in the morning, the ground beneath would be covered in shimmering ant wings, silvery and iridescent in the sunlight, a glittering carpet as light as air.

It is a vital part of the life cycle of ants to grow wings, swarm and mate. In summer, usually after some days of rain or in thundery weather, virgin queens fly from the nest and males, which have also grown wings, follow. On these Flying Ant Days (they appear to be synchronised but are, actually, a spontaneous reaction to humid, windless conditions when the ants, weak fliers, can travel as far as possible) all colonies experiencing suitable weather conditions send females on their nuptial flight. The attendant males disperse, achieving cross-fertilisation between colonies. They then die. The queens fly around and, after mating – all mating takes place in a single day – drop to the ground where they lose their wings and set about starting a new colony.

One of my sons, living near London, told me that on one day in mid-July, Londoners were assailed by millions of flying black ants, a city-living species that makes its home under pavements. As he made his way to the station after work, he saw city gents, queuing at bus-stops, raising their umbrellas in an effort to ward off the flying hordes. When he reached his home in Hertfordshire, there were swarms there too.

Despite being inept flyers – they have never flown before – the ants attempt to reach high points about which to congregate, hence Maria’s gable wall. A tree will also serve but, probably because there are no trees on the west Cork headlands, they targeted my gleaming dome.

Other insects also swarm in close weather. An old pal of mine, Kevin Hanley, told me that his boat, two miles off the Old Head of Kinsale on a mackerel-catching expedition, was suddenly inundated by millions of tiny flies, so many that they almost obscured the view. He brought me some specimens retrieved from the scuppers.

A little research with a microscope identified them as Empididae, commonly called Dance Flies, which congregate over water in dancing swarms. They are tiny – about 4mm long – and have a horny proboscis used for sucking the juices out of other insects. I am glad they did not land on my head.

Mr Hanley also informed me he had seen a giant blue dragonfly with black stripes hawking over water in Glengarriff woods. It sounded like an Emperor which is 3in long, with a 4.5in wingspan. The males are blue, the females, apple green. The species was first recorded in Ireland in 2001. Perhaps it will bring some midge-relief to crepuscular anglers like Hanley and friends.

Finally, on the subject of ants, I learn from The Fortean Times, a magazine which reports on phenomenology and weird news from all over the world, that a group of policemen in Goa, India, charged with stealing 24kg of seized hashish claimed it had been ‘eaten’ by white ants.

“All the police In-Charges who headed the anti-narcotic cell (ANC) during the last decade will have to be probed thoroughly,” Goa’s Home Minister Ravi Naik said.

Stoned ants on her gable: now that would have driven poor Maria bonkers indeed!