Ants in the compost bin

 We've been composting garden and kitchen vegetable waste in 'Dalek' bins like this for decades, but this year was the first times that we've had one taken over by nesting black ants. 

They moved in during those unusually cold weeks of early summer, probably because the warmth of decomposition in the bins provided the only location in the garden with enough heat for them to breed.  Textbooks say that they need a temperature of 10C to become active and 20C to raise a brood.

Watching their progress in the bins has been fascinating because the temperature inside rises very rapidly when the sun comes out and falls equally rapidly on dull wet days and in the evening, so they seem to be constantly moving their brood around to the optimum positions in the bin. At one point I thought they had left, but it seemed that they just moved their larvae and pupae deeper into the compost, in a cooler part of the bin. They shift their brood with remarkable speed when I lift the lid and light floods in - they can move a couple of hundred pupae, by carrying them in their jaws, in a few minutes.

Their larvae are translucent, but as they  pupate they spin a silken coat.

Lately, winged males have started to hatch so before long a queen will take to the air, followed by a swarm of males on the nuptial flight. After mating she will start a new nest, while most of the males will become food for swifts that swoop over the garden. 

Orange-sided comb-horn - a colourful daddy-long-legs

 The two commonest craneflies - Tipula oleracea and T. paludosa - are dull-coloured insects but this female orange-sided comb-horn Ctenophora pectinicornis has an orange and black colour scheme that gives it a hint of menace. We found it in old deciduous woodland on the bank of the river Wear in Durham city. The larvae (leatherjackets) of the two commonest craneflies feed on grass roots in pastures but the larvae of this woodland species feed on decaying fallen timber. 

As is so often the case, this specimen has lost a limb. Easily shed limbs might well be a last resort escape strategy, from the beak of a bird or the web of a spider.