We're using some of the Labor Day weekend to try to put the yard in order for autumn and everything that is to follow and that means the days are drawing down for the hummingbird feeders as they hit the highway and become a very much limited-time offer in these parts.
Their crystal meth is sugar water with red dye (though I've been told they are color blind so why red is more attractive than other colors I know not why, just that it is) but they are not the only creatures attracted to it or to the dispensers that hold it.
I came across this little guy this afternoon. I watched as he walked up the giant wrought iron holder. You can't see it in the picture but the hook at its top is what holds up the cage that houses the feeder, down the wire that secures the feeder to the housing, and directly to the feeder opening from which the hummingbird sips.
What the ant can't see, I'm assuming as I don't know how good their eyesight is, are all the ants who worked their way through the dispensing nozzle and ended up in the feeder reservoir where the nectar is. Once in there's no way out. That's the clump of small black dots we can see floating at the top of the nectar.
This ant eventually gave up attempting to get in and if it's possible they have feelings, may have felt defeated and discouraged as he retraced her/his steps back to the nest at the end of another shift on behalf of the colony.
He never realized how close he'd come to death from the very thing he was chasing. Just me, or does that sound like everybody we know?
-bill kenny
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