Wednesday 4 March 2015

Who's been digging up the ant hills?

I was up at Brush Hill yesterday and noticed a lot of the yellow meadow ant hills had been dug into. I saw well over a dozen of them and some had been dug into from 2 or sometimes 3 sides. It looks like whatever is doing the digging is specifically looking for something in the centre of the mound, at about ground level. They haven't completely trashed the hills, just dug into them.



My guess is that badgers must be doing it, but do they eat ants? I would have thought a nice juicy worm would be much more tasty than ants! Is this normal behavior for them? I don't remember seeing the ant hills like this before, but maybe I just didn't notice them.

It was quite hard to make out any clear tracks, but I found this one. I also found a poo nearby which may help id the culprit. (Note that there are a lot of dog walkers up there, so wouldn't be surprised of these are both from a dog!)



Anybody know what would do this to ant hills and if this is normal behavior. There are a lot of untouched ant hills up there, but even so, it seems unusual. Seems like bad news for the ants and the chalkhill blue butterflies if a badger decides to dig up all the ant hills!

2 comments:

  1. KILL THE ANTS, KILL THEM ALL!

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  2. Also i heard bears will dig up ant hills if they have scarce amounts of food

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