On a hot, summer day, more or less a week ago, a bunch of friends came to visit me. I had a huge watermelon in the fridge and, although we ate a lot around noon, a nice big piece remained. The watermelon was tasty, very sweet ... almost too sweet when we eat it, but that last piece in the evening, after some hours outside the fridge, started to smell a bit rotten ...
... and the taste was even worse ...
... so I simply threw it, in smaller chunks, through the kitchen window.
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When I went in the garden, half an hour later, I found some less choosy watermelon fans.
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The small pavement ants (Tetramorium immigrans) ...
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... and the shiny green bottle flies (Lucilia sericata) ...
... were enjoying the sweet, juicy food that kind of fell from the sky.
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Most pavement ants were feeding in organized group ...
... but I saw a couple of them enjoying the fruit alone, relatively far from the group.
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The bigger ant on this photograph belongs to another species ...
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... the Formica fusca.
I spent almost an hour with these very common insects.
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Watching them through the macro lens was a nice, calming and meditative experience.
Metallic green flies on that vivid red surface looked especially great. Here, you can see the fly near the empty exoskeleton of another insect that somehow ended up on the watermelon trash.
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And that's all. As always in these posts on HIVE, the photographs are my work.