Yup, leafcutters! You can appreciate why they've cleared the trunk trail - cumbersome to carry leaves through thick vegetation. And they are often polydomous.
I had ants in my garden, digging I found caverns and tunnels and also no hills or other signs above ground. But the walls of their buildings were compressed stabilizing the structures. And the most disturbing finds were some large holes, size of a basketball, they collected the rainwater and drained it apart from the main structure. After the neighbor stopped keeping chickens the ants vanished.
I'm still disturbed.
They were probably eating chicken food! Yes, depending on the species, they may do different things with the soil/tailings. In some cases the nest might be polydomous, so there might not be any mounds where you're looking , but there might be mounds somewhere else in the vicinity.
smells of bikes
theantlady
Thomas Sibley
Philipp Alexander Vollmer