A small bat decided to take a nap on one of the beams of my roof. Walking along the road, I saw a beautiful bird called a barranquero that has two long gorgeous tail feathers. I also spotted a shy and cute giant rodent called a picuro hiding in the bushes in the garden outside my house.
It was the time of the year that the leafcutter ant princesses came out from their nests for the only time in their lives! They are a species called Atta laevigata but the locals call them "big-bottomed ants" in Spanish. Ant colonies have many different sizes of ants in them, and the queen ants are the biggest. They are usually the mothers of the whole colony of millions of ants. The princesses only leave the nest one time in their lives. They emerge to meet male ants in the skies. Then they fly back down to earth and lose their wings and dig their own nest to lay many eggs for the rest of their lives. It's a very hard and dangerous flight and hard work to find a good nest place. Only around 1 in 50 princesses that come out of their nest get to become queens. Birds, frogs, and humans are predators of these ants. Their very big bottoms (also called abdomens) contain lots of protein and all the millions of eggs they need to start a colony so they are full of nutrients and taste very delicious!
