Tree nests

A few days ago, I spotted some tree nests during my morning walk. They looked unusual, so I stood around for a while, hoping to see some birds descend and start feeding their young ones. No luck. I peered at the nest, hoping to see the opening through which the bird inside would be fed by a hard-working parent, but I couldn’t spot any opening either. I finally did what anyone with a mobile does nowadays–snapped a few pictures.

Back at home, I wondered how to figure out which bird makes such nests. I tried surfing for bird nests; again, no luck. Finally, I posted the pictures on Facebook and was told that they were the nests of ants 🙁

I must admit to an initial disbelief. These nests were big, and on trees, and I’d never thought ants would climb up trees and make such (as a proportion of their size) huge nests. But then I checked up some more, and found pictures of trees nests made by weaver ants and a page on them in Wikipedia. Check out the Wikipedia page on weaver ants, and also one image available in Wikipedia commons. Because the images are released under creative commons, I am also linking to two such images below:

I’m so glad I didn’t go closer to check assuming these were bird nests 🙂 But I’m very intrigued now and I’ll be on the look-out for nests that may have fallen down; if I spot one, I will (very, very carefully) examine it to see the workmanship of ants.