As I’ve posited in these pages before, the main reason for having a blog and keeping it going for nearly nine years (!) is to be able to track the annual cavalcade of winged whimsy which is Flying Ant Day.
As in previous years, the date seems to be geographically clustered (which makes sense, I guess) and after an early misfire on Wood Lane a couple of weeks back, I can now confirm that it does, indeed, appear to be Flying Ant Day in London.
| Year | FAD London SW14 | FAD elsewhere |
| 2000 | 21 July | |
| 2001 | 23 July | |
| 2002 | 26 July | |
| 2003 | 27 July | |
| 2004 | 22 July | 6 July (West London) 17 July (West London, Hackney, Manor Park, Roy Bridge) 27 July (Didcot) |
| 2005 | 29 July | 12 July (West London) 2 August (Mill Hill) |
| 2006 | 12 July | 12 July (Enfield) Teddington) 17 July (West Sussex, West London) 26 July ILondon SE14) |
| 2007 | 19 July | 8 July Nottingham 13 July (West Sussex) 14 July (East Sussex) 15 July (Portsmouth, Harrow, East London, West London, West Berkshire, Oxford, Verwood, Dorset, Kent, Crawley, Reading) 16 July (Romford, Dublin) 17 July (Heysham, Lancashire) 19 July (Derby, Derby, Walsall, Bermondsey, Marlborough) |
| 2008 | 22 July | 22 July (EC1 - my workplace), Kent - via Hg, Wood Lane W12 - via Cliff & lmg, E11 - via tomskerous, NW5 - via Girlwithaonetrackmind, W14 Barons Court - via ChrisL |
So we can see that the slight anomolies of early sightings we experienced in the last few years have now been corrected, and we’re back in the range of 2004.
This year has been notable not for the number of reports, but for the fact that so many people IMed/twittered/emailed me directly to let me know when they saw the little flying feckers, because (in the words of one) they now associate FAD with me. Bless.
But on a relevant note, Twitter has made it easier to track sightings.
For example, we can see that there have been 26 mentions of “flying ant” and 39 of “flying ants” (many mentioning London) in public twitter streams since lunchtime today. Before that, the previous mention was a week ago, then nothing much until three weeks back. So not only can we tell it’s FAD in London, but we can be reasonably sure that it started at lunchtime. How cool is that?
I’ve also noticed that I get a sense of flying ant season from looking at my site analytics. Over the past month there have been nearly a thousand searches resulting in a visit to my site from people looking for information about flying ants, and there are definite peaks in there (peak ant?): June 22, July 2, July 7, July 14. And today.
We were talking about Flying Ant Day in the pub on Saturday night. “My friend tracks it on her blog every year,” I proclaimed proudly. My conversational partner clearly failed to understand the brilliance of the concept.
That is really weird.
The flying ants in Newcastle moved into our office about 4 weeks ago. For various reasons (mainly that there was a gap in provision between contracted out Estates services but other reasons too) they were not exterminated til yesterday. And the first time I saw them, I thought of you.
Yesterday, when they were gone, I was just immensely relieved. Four weeks of flying ants in the office is just nasty.
By the way, call me dim but after nearly seven years of knowing you I’ve only just made the conceptual connection between Flying Ant Day and The Mayfly Project: small, winged creatures of ephemeral duration.
Dublin Tallaght
Just starting
20:00 22nd July 2008
Today, a few of them landed in my hair and crawled around. I wasn’t happy.
Loving the graph/stats: amazing that this whole thing peaks around now.
went to post office today and thought it was my lack of bath attracting bugs until i say everyone doing the same bug dance. Only people not bothered were the whitechapel tramps.
We got em in Crawley, West Sussex today!
In case you’re looking for more locations, I can report that SW15 is positively teeming with the little wingéd things. Though from the look of previous years it’s not exactly surprising - 22nd July is bang in the middle of their usual appearance dates.
yep loads of them in hither green - SE13 on my walk home from the station
a mix of big ones and little ones and lots of dead squished ones.
but the pavement was littered with them.
mac
I can confirm that both W11 (Notting Hill) and SW1(Victoria) are on schedule. Lots of flying ants both places. I actually found one in my hair while on the tube! Yuk!
plenty of flying ants here in Exeter, Devon today, first saw them a couple of days ago, but they were mainly little’uns.
The big’uns are out in force today.
London, NW10 too. At 2.30/3.30. Emerging from holes in the pavement in spectacular fashion.
Here in Kettering Northamptonshire we have had major ant problems today, starting around 17.30. Flying ants, black and red ants. Hope this helps you plot this weird phenomenon.
Sue
B79 Tamworth Staffordshire…they’re out in force in my garden this evening all playing happily in my daughters sand pit. Also had to close the car window as they swarmed at me whilst sat at the lights, one hitch hiked on my windscreen wiper!
A load of the little blighters on trains from Waterloo to Kent, and plenty when I got off in Gravesend, Kent, including large clusters in the garden!
All over Croydon today! I’d never heard of Flying Ant day so searched this evening on Google! I feel better knowing that it isn’t some sort of plague!
Loads around in Surrey today. All over round Esher, Weybridge, Walton on Thames etc. Was described by someone delivering the phone books as “a mist”. Some really big ones too!
FAD not just in W12 from where I twittered, but also in east Berkshire, as if in a holding pattern over Heathrow.
Thousands in the centre of Nottingham today (22nd) from early evening onwards!!! did a google search and this came up so i thought i’d let you know for your records :p
me and some friends got attacked by a humongous swarm of them during lunchtime in London, especially from Marble Arch to Oxford Circus. i never knew there was a flying ant day, relieves me from all kind of freaky theories i thought of, whew!
They were out and about in W4 yesterday as well. Getting everywhere.
Flying Ants spotted in Birmingham, B13 yesterday.
Annoyed my wife who had just cleaned her car.
Went to TESCO shopping today and had my car window down and loads of them flew into my car! They were all over everybody elses car too. Never heard of this day until i described what happened to a colleague and he said it must be flying ant day!
Spotted 23/07/08 Formby L37 - England
I’m sure this is the reason to invent (and - more importantly - keep, despite all of its problems) the internet.
You are a star for tracking Flying Ant Day. Your ideas intrigue me. I’d like to subscribe to your
newsletterRSS feed.Brick Lane in London E2 was a nightmare yesterday (22nd) with these little guys. I walked a mile and a half home and spotted them on the pavement the whole way back. Strangely enough today they were all but gone, apart from the splotches on the pavement.
We had flying ants outside our office on Friday according to the Accounts Lady (I came home at lunchtime with tonsilitis i’d managed to fight it for 3 hours then gave in)
hi, i’ve never seen flying ants until today, they freeked me out but i’am glad to read that they should be away soon.
Their little corpses were swept up by the council in W9 and so only the memory of them remains. Until next year.
Yep! 22nd was flying ant day for me too! Came home to find the front path crawling (and flying-ish) with the little things. Ant powder to the rescue.
So that’s 22nd July, Loughborough.
We had FAD on Wednesday 23 July in Glasgow.
Definitely Wed 23rd for the West End of Glasgow, much later than last year. And now they’re talking about them on the BBC today too.
23rd here in Cumbernauld, just north east of Glasgow. Although I didn’t spot very many of them.
Marlborough, 26 July 2008!
The nasty little blighters decided to launch a sneak attack on our kitchen on Friday evening (25/7 - Cambridge UK). Spray tins of death, ant powder and the nozzle of the Dyson were used in the counter attack, it was a hard fought battle but we were victorious in the end. Hopefully that is the last we will see of them for another year.
Glad to not be the only one who blogs about this! You know its UK summer when the ants start flying!
Aug 21: Ottawa, ON - Today is the day - We’ve got clouds of flying ants and many thousands of ringbill gulls - the latter consuming the former - in the air behind my house in south Ottawa. Amazing sight! Based on a previous comment to last year’s FAD post (i.e. “On 08.25.07 Ursel said:
Aug. 24 was flying ant day in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. I must say that I had never heard of this before until I saw it for the first time at the age of 50!”)we’ve moved up 3 days from last year. Climate change/precipitation (much more this summer than last)/or too little data to say anything. Feel free to speculate!
MW
Today, Aug 29, is Flying Ant Day in my neighborhood in Minneapolis, Minnesota USA!
six to ten nests in lawn was three large nests yesterday, the 30 of august and 6 small nest today the 31 of august. goffstown NH