Northern Ireland has been hit by a swarm of flying ants which had been spotted earlier in the week on a weather radar by the Met Office.
The ants, which can live up to a month, showed up as interference on the Met's Office radar imagery from its land-based system some days ago.
And now it appears they have made their way across the island of Ireland.
Countless ants were seen in the skies above Bangor, Co Down at dusk and in Dublin one woman said her home was engulfed by the insects last night.
Rebecca Flynn told Dublin Live : "I was out the front getting one of my kids who was out playing and when I came back in I noticed that there were ants in the front garden.
"I knew from previous years that they would come out from under the artificial grass so I went to look.
"The next thing I was shouting in to my husband to close all the windows and doors."
The insects take to the skies around this time every year for mating season in a phenomenon known as Flying Ant Day - but it lasts a lot longer than 24 hours.
Flying ant day refers to the time males and new queens leave the nest to mate, with many ant colonies doing so on the same day.
According to the Royal Society of Biology's citizen science project, the Flying Ant Survey, the appearance of the ant swarms depends on weather conditions, the ants can start emerging and flying at almost any point during the summer months.
The survey found ants only flew when the temperature was above 13C and when the wind speed was less than 6.3 metres per second.
During the course of the study, every day in the summer that had a mean temperature above 25C had ants flying somewhere in the UK.
A Met Office spokesperson said last week: “The radar is actually picking up a swarm of flying ants across the southeast. During the summer, ants can take to the skies in a mass emergence usually on warm, humid and windless days.”
