Okay, full information of the trip:
These nests were maybe 2? miles into the trail. I spent 3 hours on the trail last night trying to locate a queen, from 8:30 to 11:30
I saw a few foraging on bare ground, but they were very few. Most were out foraging on large rocks or in oak trees.
Of the colonies I saw:
2 nests were high up (15 feet or so) in oak trees, I could tell by a congregation of 20+ workers around the entrance
5+ had workers climbing all over the oak trees but I could not locate the nest entrance
1 nest was in a crack at the base of the oak tree
6 or more were on very large rocks that were underneath or close to oak trees but worker density was decidedly higher on the rocks than the trees they were by
The nests I were able to locate and see properly had entrances composed of decaying leaf litter. I also saw many workers dragging dead leaves and arranging dead leaves to the entrance. Given this, I suspect this species wants decaying oak leaves and a crack in something to build their nests.
TO GET TO EXACTLY WHERE i WAS:
I suggest bringing a mountain bike as it's far into the trail and on the way there there isn't much interesting. Follow the trail until you notice the electrical warning signs on the left, continue until you get to a bridge where the warning signs stop. The bridge crosses over the stream. Immediately after the bridge, on the right side there will be big boulders and many oak trees. You can find a couple of nests a bit before the bridge, but a majority are after the bridge. Once elevation on the trail starts going too high the nests become very uncommon.
also it's spooky as all get out on that trail alone so if anybody would like to go searching for queens of this species with me I'm open to driving anywhere on weekends.
Edited by soulsynapse, April 22 2017 - 10:59 AM.