Trees and Ants

We've just had a very relaxing weekend. Got up about 8am rather than our usual 5.30 or 6am. You need to get up that early to get a good yoga session in before it gets too hot. Its also a beautiful time of day as the light changes and the forest wakes up. Mind you, the roosters have usually been up half the night already crowing about things. Tempts me to give up being a vegetarian and going hunting!

We hung out by the lake, went for a couple of walks and found a great cafe with a lake view balcony and delicious fruit juices - called licuados in Spanish - at 8Quatzales.


Leafcutter Ant

I have got into photographing leafcutter ants and trees. The ants are amazing. They're strung out everywhere in long busy lines of wobbling, moving bright green leaves. But the best are the gangs that hurry back and forward across one of the footpaths through the Cerro Cahui Biotopo. They have the choicest, biggest, greenest leaves and the best soldeir ants to guard them and move obstacles out of their way. Every so often an ant falls or drops its leaf and its like a small green animal has tripped. They wind their way over sticks and down the sides of the stones like an Its A Knockout course developed by Michael Bentine's Potty Time. And most of them are not only carrying a leaf 10 times their size but also a hitchhiker too. There's nearly always another ant riding the leaf. I don't know why. has it just got tired and looking for a free ride back or is it there to help cross difficult obstacles?


Leafcutter Troupe

The trees these tiny ants are diligently chopping leaves from tower overhead. Rainforest trees are magnificent. They snake up to a high canopy of all shapes and colours. What is best about them are the epyphytes that cling to their branches, sucking moisture from the air through their hanging roots. The trees are where the fertility of the rainforest is stored. Not in the ground which is low quality thin limestone soil, but growing in the air.

Remove the forest and you lose the fertility. The ancient Maya knew how to grow crops on massive mats of compost, to work with the forest rather than destroy it all. That's why they successfully sustained a massive city-state culture for over a thousand years. And the end of the city-state phase wasn't due to over-exploitation of the forest but the loss of credibility of their elites, probably caused by too much aggressive competition between cities.


Tree Dancer