Beacon Hill Yellow Meadow Ant Hills

The grassy bumps, dotted over the grasslands, are ant-hills made by yellow meadow a been continuously occupied, and growing in size, for about hundred years, because the top of ploughed in 1904. Since spread about 20 different species of ants living here, and they are constantly at war with one another, but the yellow meadow ant is the only mound-builder. Beacon Hill was last 1967 Dr Tim King has been studying the plant life that grows on the ant-hills, how rabbits help d plant seeds from the mound to mound, and why mosses only seem to grow on the north side of ant-hills. There are ant-hills support a different set of plant species from the surrounding chalk grassland. Rockrose and thyme can p through the heaped soil, whereas dwarf thistle, salad burnet, hawkbit and plantain often die when the ants heap soil over them.

Great walk with fantastic views