Anyone know ant this drought will do to the ant population?


I know that a lot of folks contribute the lack of quil in certain areas is loss of habitat and ants.

While I'm sure the drought is hurting the birds, I hope in return it is knocking the ant population as well.

I think the drought just makes the fire ants go deeper to find moisture. If we do get a good rain, I'll bet we'll see new mounds everywhere!

I didn't see any ants in my backyard til we got some rain.
Now I have more anthills than Ive ever had.

Well that just sucks!

It would be nice to know that the drought had a serious impact on them. Does anything in Mother Nature eradicate those critters?

there is i forget there name but they have huge tounge and eat them

I was out at our place near Graham this weekend. Its the fewest fire ant mounds I have seen in three years out there (since they migrated that far west). The red ants seem to be thriving just fine, which is good to try and keep the fire ants at bay.

I will say that its the poorest weed production I can remember seeing ever out in that neck of the woods... no ragweed, broomweed, and not even straggler sunflowers in the bar ditches. Can't think of a better word than depressing.

"I was out at our place near Graham this weekend."

DWQ, what direction out of Graham are you? I lease about 20 miles north and I fear I am in the same boat as you. I have a pen full of young dogs and it looks like it will be liberated birds only for me this year. What a shame but I have no choice it appears.

I am about 9 miles north east as the crow flies, in between Graham and Jermyn. I worry about water availability as well on older, weakened birds -- I have a 2 acre pond when full that is down to about 50 feet around. It is hard to walk around it because of hog and deer tracks made as it has been receeding...think the furry animals are sucking me dry. My other ponds are dry and three of my neighbors I talked to around me have their 1 acre ponds dried up. There sure aint no dew in the morning when it starts out at 93 degrees to get weed moisture off of.

He's right

I know when I was home in June I killed a hog out on my lease and by the time I got the dogs back in the pickup and back to the hog (100 yard walk both ways) it was so covered with ants I couldn't even pick it up.

Ants-1
Me- 0

They got to keep that one.

DWQ, I am over around Jean. Everything is dry there. Rancher sold all his cattle. Lease mate sent me photos this morning from his trail cam and pigs are eating us down. There were at least 40 under one feeder a couple of nights ago. they were poor looking. I have been on this lease 7 years and have maybe seen a hand full of pigs there in that time. They have found us. Things look bad for quail.

I thought about taking pictures to give everyone a feel, if they havent been out west yet. Written off this year and praying that we get some rain starting in January and we keep enough seed birds to salvage 2012

i havent seen just a whole lot of bugs of any sort running around. maybe the chicks will have hatched and be in good shape before these ants get their thoughts together....

Some of you have seen this picture before, but I'll take a wet year and fire ants anyday over a dry year.


I included this picture to show you the size of the fire ant beds. You will high center them with your vehicle. Look in the lower right hand corner.

There is a little monkey in South America that eats hymenoptera, ... ants. Problem is, there are not enough trees for them here. Then there is the weather.

DDT would do the trick. But the tree Hugger EPA fixed that one for us. LOL!

Here's an article to some well known research on the extermination of fire ants. It dosen't work everywhere but it's a GREAT start..

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/09/060927110742.htm

Quote:"Fire ants are not typically pests or even common in South America in large part because of harassment by the phorid flies. In the presence of these flies, ants have difficulty retrieving food, having mating flights or rescuing their larvae after mounds become disturbed by animals such as armadillos during the day."