Flying ant day?

Not sure if it’s flying ant day but we have A LOT flying around outside the house!

Yep, they are everywhere!

Ditto. Driving me bonkers. Seems to be the same day ish each year. Why does it happen? It was the same in dulwich this morning.

There’s always a reddit flying ant day post so yes that would appear to confirm it is today.

A bit earlier this year compared to previous topics:

July 13th in 2017: Flying Ant Day in SE23
July 16th in 2019: Non human visitors & residents of SE23

I saw that in some parts the ant swarms were dense enough to appear on weather radar!

Certainly saw them in the area yesterday.

Flying Ant Day is a misnomer though, it’s not just one day!

Is it though? I think it’s true! Whilst you get ants flying on lots of other days as I think various studies have shown, to my uneducated eye it appears there is a day each year when you have a mass of flying ants (and I guess that day my vary regionally based on weather and conditions). I’m not sure we will have another day like yesterday in SE23 this year for flying ants!

I think there’s always one day where they are heaviest in number but from my cycling commuting days, I seem to recall more than one day in a summer where it happened. That might have been across two different areas - is Brixton’s flying ant day the same as ours? - rather than two separate days here.

This is exactly it. There is one day for each area where the number of ants is clearly at a maximum. But it is a different day for different areas, particularly between towns and countryside, so “Flying Ant Day” can be a bit misleading in that regard.

Apparently the flying ants were so numerous over parts of the south coast today that they showed up as ‘rain’ on the Met Office radar - I think Sky’s headline writers got a little overexcited!

Sounds like flying ant day saved a slow news day!

At least they got a good factoid in the article, which agrees with @neilw:

The Royal Society of Biology points out there is not always one such day, with flying ants spotted on as many as 96% of the days between June and September.

I presume the Royal Society of Biology know this because they keep an eye out from space

As if to underscore the “not just one day” point, there’s been a few flying ants around Perry Vale today, three weeks later!

yes it’s flying ant day 2.0 can confirm.

Why do I always seem to be in yellow on flying ant day

According to an article in the news, flying ant day is likely to be this weekend

Let’s hope they don’t make an appearance at Wembley tomorrow evening!

That’s what the article was saying

I think it was yesterday as there were quite a few hitching a ride on the Overground… Unless it’s like Secret Cinema and they were on their way to an exclusive secret location 🪰

I must admit I didn’t notice it this year, in SE 23 anyway. I wonder if the weather this year reduced numbers?

There have been flying ants around their nests over the last few days, but I didn’t see a swarm.

Some large female ants were crawling along the pavement today, which usually means the mating is done. Possibly they swarmed in the early hours of the morning and no one was around to see it?

All been pinged by track and trace

I haven’t seen loads this year either. There were quite a few ants (not flying ones) & maggots under our black bin last week when I pulled it out to empty. I swept them all up & put them in the garden bin!

I had this experience as well. Mentioned it to a friend who said that - if they weren’t wriggling - the ‘maggots’ were quite possibly ant eggs - and that I (and therefore possibly also your good self) may have inadvertently destroyed a potential flying ant outbreak in our immediate area…

A few of them were wriggling, but flying ants or not, I just wanted them gone!
The one good thing about having the food bin now is that I don’t get maggots in the black bin. That used to freak me out! I used to empty the whole bin into one black bag & take it over to the street bin over the road.