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By Root 736 0

blacks and reds carrying brood and adults, as before. That is, I realized this colony of both red and blacks was dispersed into at least two domiciles, between which it shifted its colony members (much as we move from home to camp and back again, depending on the season or the weather). Four days later, on 29 July, while the colony transfer from one nest to the other was still in progress, I dug up the satellite nest. Here, finally, I saw what I was looking for: winged ants (i.e., the virgin reproductives). I counted 154 males and ninety-five females (queens). Winged males and females eventually leave their parent colony and disperse in all directions. Back on the ground after being mated with the males from other colonies, the females then break their wings off and settle down to commence a lifetime of egg laying.

31 July 1983. It is a beautiful sunny morning with no wind, and the screen tent that I previously placed over the main colony of the reds has finally paid off. Alates flew up into the tent, where I could retrieve them (as I had hoped, since I expected them to go to the light in the sky for their nuptials and their dispersal). That morning I captured a flight of 194 males. (It made sense for the females not to swarm simultaneously, to reduce inbreeding.) None left during the rest of the day. On 3 August the nest issued at least twenty-five more males, and on 8 August another 100 males came from the main nest.

Now came the rub. I knew that the workers are smaller-bodied versions of queens (except that virgin queens have wings), so the new queens should be easy to identify. But I had no idea what males might look like. These males were all black. Could they potentially be males of the black species Formica fusca?

Ant taxonomy is a difficult subject, and I was stuck. This was not something I could solve by observations and experiments, so I went straight to the authority: I sent them to the premier ant specialist, Edward O. Wilson. Contrary to what I might have naively assumed from superficial appearance, the black male ants were identified as “reds,” F. subintegra, just as they were supposed to be according to standard ant lore. (I later had occasion to dig up a nest of the black ants, F. fusca, and found some of their males ready to leave. They were also black, but these had red legs and darkly pigmented wings.)

Bert Hölldobler, another world authority on ants, wrote to me:

You observed raids, but you also observed nest emigrations. During raids, only pupae or fully grown larvae are taken by the raiders. When emigrations to another nest occur, then the younger workers are also carried. You observed an emigration of the mixed (slaves and raiders) colony where mostly the raider species was seen as carrier. This was probably due to the fact that they were the older workers, and the black ones (the slaves) the younger. Emigrations occur especially in late summer and fall, when many ants shift nest sites, because many species propagate by budding or establish “winter nests.”

I had not made original discoveries, but no discoveries can be made without exploring, and thanks to my ignorance I had been lured to try. I had fun, I had learned much about ants, and they had helped make several summers special.

20

Blackbirds

24 September 2005. MOST TREES ARE STILL BRIGHT green, but the forest is now becoming a rich palette where individual trees have definition, as those still green contrast with others—the black-greens of the balsam firs, and here and there some gold and orange and a few points of bright red brilliance from the maples. The colors are most impressive when the sky is leaden, when drifting clouds bring diffuse light that illuminates the colors—bright sun bleaches them out.

Caterpillars of many kinds are common this fall. Now, in late September, is a good time to find some of the big moth caterpillars. Since many of the birds are already gone, perhaps they are now safer from birds—but they are never safe from parasites. I have kept track of a waved sphinx moth (Ceratomia undulosa) caterpillar