Red wood ant in Lasgarn Wood

When in primary school some of the streetwise kids claimed the chunky eggs of the red wood ant could be harvested as fish food. I believed them of course. Today I question this as a truism, but I do have vivid memories of the red wood ant occurring frequently throughout the Lasgarn Wood, near Abersychan. Their impressive nests made of piles of larch needles located on the edge of a sunny glade and when out birding where given a wide birth, to do otherwise would risk your shoes and trousers becoming engulfed by busy aggressive looking ants armed with that chemical weapon of formic acid. Away from the nests wood ants could be encountered along footpaths some considerable distance from known any nest site.

I had feared the felling of the larch plantation, that was the ants stronghold, would have a detrimental impact on the status of an invertebrate that has its stronghold elsewhere in Gwent. But, my new found local patch of Company's Wood has proved otherwise. On well trodden footpaths wood ants are widespread, so numerous that they can be seen forming broken lines of single file activity. Even fallen timber, exposed to the sunlight are a meeting point for ants, just like the public realm of an urban shopping centre.