I observed some interesting behaviours while I was in the garden today. I saw some birds jumping through borders and shrubbery in the garden and foraging in the borders on the ground in the garden and on the other side where the grass hasn’t been cut yet cause I having been putting bird food out when I usually do.
Birds were vocal cause its breeding season mainly a few great tits that visited. A Robin and 2 blackbird.
I have had to take out a shrub before doing so I removed leaf litter and allowed them to escape it was interesting what species were there. Yesterday when I started it was a centipede and today it was 2 rover beetles. Later after I had uprooted the plant I spotted something crawling in my border that wasn’t there earlyer. It would of been sensible to stay still rather than keep going cause ants can sense vibrations and they can only sense movement sight wise This is why wildlife usually freeze when there’s ants nearby or act cautiously sometimes and also why when an ant spots them they stay still until the ants loose interest and then they move again but this one didnt. It was a caterpillar and it was being chased by some Ants that were crawling all over it and hopeing to escape. Usually I just let nature do it’s thing but this time I was convinced I could get all the ants of the caterpillar and then let it get away but the ants were very determined here I ended up having to learn a important lesson about nature from nature itself cause even though I managed to get the ants off it with a leaf and slip a leaf under the caterpillar and bring it away this (is) one of those situations where you must acept that not all caterpillars will survive and just let nature do its thing. I didn’t take any pictures while doing what I did before cause I had to concentrate.
An ant had held on to the caterpillar under its belly by useing its mouth and was clinging onto it tightly. I took the caterpillar on the leaf to my second wildlife border but then I had to go for my medication it didn’t take long for the ants to pick up on the presence of the caterpillar even though I was less than 5 minutes and they were a separate ant colony aswell they picked up on it in less than 5 minutes by the time I came back to my border ants were chargeing up to the caterpillar like an army and subdued it. No matter where the caterpillar goes it’s going to end up as dinner anyway cause ants can be found anywhere in the garden so I put my realisation into practice and let nature do it’s thing. I took photos of the interesting situation play out and filmed it even though they are small together they can do more than they look. And they used a wooden bark and a few other things in the border in that spot to try and help them with the caterpillar more easily one even used a platform a mound of soil to lean and grab the caterpillar at one point and they all worked together to move the caterpillar around to make it easyer to eat as soon as they pulled it they started eating it small bites at a time then tryed to pull it behind a leaf the caterpillar was resistant at first and resorted to a defence mechanism which was to struggle and fall to the ground and threw its body over the top of a peice of bark to the opposite side away from the ants and started wriggleibg trying to get on its back but this didn’t help cause the ants sensed it moving about and struggling to get up so they ran to the catterpillar and pulled it back to where it was then it apeared to play dead again staying still but it was too late at this point so they dragged it Under the leaf and that’s last I saw of it playing out but it was very interesting to watch
