eagle300's Journal

While poking around the great outdoors, I noticed one particularly large ant nest, maybe a foot wide with half a dozen entrance holes.the ants were medium sized, dull black or grey in color. I later recognized them as being of the genus Formica. After further inspection of the nest, I noticed the shriveled corpses of a much smaller ant littering a few of the uppermost tunnels. I searched around for the victim nest, but found nothing until the next day.
The nest in a question was much more modest than the former, measuring only a couple inches wide, with but a single entrance hole. A lone, large-headed soldier patrolled just outside the mound. The Formica ants must have been raiding this newly emerging colony, and the small colony was doing it's best to defend itself with it's limited population. I later identified the bigger ants as Formica glacialis, and the smaller ants, unmistakable as Pheidole because of the shape and size of their heads, as Pheidole pilifera

They P. pilifera colony seems to be taking more hits, as half a dozen bodies were discovered in the colony of a small yellow ant, that may be a theif ant nest. Meanwhile, tensions between F. glacialis workers and the pilifera nest are rising. Many glacialis workers are running frenzily around in the area, perhaps more raids are brewing. Also, workers of the species, Camponotus Pennsylvanicus, the great carpenter ant, are abroad.

There's a species of ants that looks very similiar to F. glacialis, but with diffirent coloration. Checked it out on Antweb and it looks like Formica incerta. I saw some of those tiny yellow ants hauling one of these guys in to the nest. must have caught it foraging alone.