ant-thrushes always accompany the army ants in the forest. They do
not, however, feed on the ants, but on the insects they disturb.
Besides the ant-thrushes, trogons, creepers, and a variety of other
birds, are often seen on the branches of trees above where an ant
army is foraging below, pursuing and catching the insects that fly
up.

The insects caught by the ants are dismembered, and their too bulky
bodies bitten to pieces and carried off to the rear. Behind the
army there are always small columns engaged on this duty. I have
followed up these columns often; generally they led to dense masses
of impenetrable brushwood, but twice they led me to cracks in the
ground, down which the ants dragged their prey. These habitations
are only temporary, for in a few days not an ant would be seen in
the neighbourhood; all would have moved off to fresh
hunting-grounds.

Another much larger species of foraging ant (Eciton hamata) hunts
sometimes in dense armies, sometimes in columns, according to the
prey it may be after. When in columns, I found that it was
generally, if not always, in search of the nests of another ant
(Hypoclinea sp.), which rear their young in holes in rotten trunks
of fallen timber, and are very common in cleared places. The
Ecitons hunt about in columns, which branch off in various
directions. When a fallen log is reached, the column spreads out
over it, searching through all the holes and cracks. The workers
are of various sizes, and the smallest are here of use, for they
squeeze themselves into the narrowest holes, and search out their
prey in the furthest ramifications of the nests. When a nest of the
Hypoclinea is attacked, the ants rush out, carrying the larvae and