BS: Fireflies / Lightning Bugs

Subject: BS: Fireflies / Lightning Bugs
From: Wesley S
Date: 17 Jul 14 - 10:22 AM

I don't know what's happening in the rest of the country but here in north Georgia it's a good year for fireflies. There is an amazing amount of them this year. I actually thought there were some Christmas lights on display at an office building nearby.

It turns out that these are actually beetles. And yes - the light they produce is meant to attract the female of the species. For some reason the females want to mate with the males whose light is the brightest and lasts the longest. Insert your own joke here.

Is everyone else seeing as many lightning bugs in their area as we are?

Subject: RE: BS: Fireflies / Lightning Bugs
From: PHJim
Date: 17 Jul 14 - 10:30 AM

Maggie and I went down to the lakeshore in Port Hope, Ontario to watch the July 1st fireworks and got a show from the fireflies before the actual fireworks started.

Subject: RE: BS: Fireflies / Lightning Bugs
From: ranger1
Date: 17 Jul 14 - 11:50 AM

It's been a good year here in Maine, too, at least in my neighborhood. Could be because there aren't any street lights on my road and we don't use any pesticides or herbicides on our field.

Subject: RE: BS: Fireflies / Lightning Bugs
From: gnu
Date: 17 Jul 14 - 11:59 AM

r1... PICS!

I miss them terribly now that I can't get to the woods anymore.

Subject: RE: BS: Fireflies / Lightning Bugs
From: Wesley S
Date: 17 Jul 14 - 12:08 PM

I don't have to go to the woods. Just go out my backdoor.

Subject: RE: BS: Fireflies / Lightning Bugs
From: Bill D
Date: 17 Jul 14 - 12:22 PM

Every July, our Open Sing in the Wash DC metro area is held at a home where (at least) 3 varieties put on a display (different types choose different heights). We have a couple types here at my house. It's been hot and rainy the last few weeks...maybe they like it.

Subject: RE: BS: Fireflies / Lightning Bugs
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 17 Jul 14 - 12:37 PM

I always remember the fireflies at a place we stayed in southern Indiana (or thereabouts), while on a tiring drive across the country.
A motel with a large swimming pool backed by shrubs and trees. The fireflies were abundant and put on a good show, greatly enjoyed by our two small children.
Coming from the dryer, higher altitude southwest where fireflies are few, the show was a revelation.

Subject: RE: BS: Fireflies / Lightning Bugs
From: Ebbie
Date: 17 Jul 14 - 12:41 PM

grrrrrr... Fireflies never learned to fly high enough to cross the Rocky Mountains, I guess.   I never saw any in my life until my family left Oregon in 1949 for the East Coast and I've never seen any since I left there.

Subject: RE: BS: Fireflies / Lightning Bugs
From: Rapparee
Date: 17 Jul 14 - 12:49 PM

Little flying bugs with flashlights stuck up their arse. Used to catch 'em and they were always dead by the next day, even with airholes in the jar lid.

Subject: RE: BS: Fireflies / Lightning Bugs
From: ChanteyLass
Date: 17 Jul 14 - 03:25 PM

I don't spend much time outdoors, so I rarely see fireflies. The other night, I opened my glass slider and on the outside of the screen door was a lit-up lightning bug! Delightful surprise!

Subject: RE: BS: Fireflies / Lightning Bugs
From: Jeri
Date: 17 Jul 14 - 03:46 PM

A million tiny fireflies
Burned in the corn
Ahead in the distance
As the night was born

I wrote that based on a memory of a field in Indiana lit up by fireflies. I've never seen anything like that before or since. I think there were a lot of them this year, but it's past peak now.

I've had one get inside my window before. The light isn't as annoying as a loud cricket invader, but I did have to get up and do a catch-and-release.

Subject: RE: BS: Fireflies / Lightning Bugs
From: Ed T
Date: 17 Jul 14 - 03:55 PM

Interesting facts on fireflies from the Smithsonian:

fireflies 

Subject: RE: BS: Fireflies / Lightning Bugs
From: Joe Offer
Date: 17 Jul 14 - 05:11 PM

I grew up in Michigan and Wisconsin, and fireflies were a normal part of life until I moved to California in 1971. I've never seen one here, but I occasionally get back to the Great Lakes during firefly season. Last time I saw them, was on the shore of Lake Erie at Lorain Ohio about 15 years ago. They were still a wonderful thing to see.

-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: Fireflies / Lightning Bugs
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 17 Jul 14 - 07:10 PM

I have a few in my back yard, and I wish I had more. Ours are yellow.

I've seen white ones in Great Smokey Mountain National Park.

Subject: RE: BS: Fireflies / Lightning Bugs
From: Joe_F
Date: 17 Jul 14 - 09:29 PM

"I chanced to end my three months' visit in the same district of the Berkshires where it had begun.... At night there were fireflies to remind us that this was the latitude of Madrid. Thunderstorms did not disconcert them, and I would watch their flash vanish in the superior brilliancy of the lightning, and reappear. Some of them flew at the level of the grass, others across the curtain of birch trees. They were extraordinarily bright; it was a good year for fireflies, and the memory of them sparking in the warm rain and the thunder is the latest of my American impressions, and the loveliest." -- E. M. Forster, "The United States" (1947)

I have read that somewhere in Africa they frequent the trees on river banks and flash in *waves*.

Subject: RE: BS: Fireflies / Lightning Bugs
From: Bill D
Date: 17 Jul 14 - 10:01 PM

from dusty shelves of my brain which have seldom been accessed since childhood.


"The firefly's flame
Is something for which science has no name.
And I can think of nothing eerier
Than flying around with an unidentified glow on one's posterior.


~Ogden Nash
------------------------------------------------
Did you hear about the firefly who backed into an electric fan?


He was delighted!

Subject: RE: BS: Fireflies / Lightning Bugs
From: GUEST,j-boy
Date: 17 Jul 14 - 11:52 PM

Firefly class 03-K64. Named her Serenity. Still flyin'.

Subject: RE: BS: Fireflies / Lightning Bugs
From: Janie
Date: 18 Jul 14 - 12:05 AM

I love 'em! Where I live they peak in early June, and I think we have only one species. Still a few around. I do recall doing a bit of research and learning that the grubs do prefer and survive better in moist soils. We had good rain last summer and fair rain earlier this spring and summer, so two years of remarkable display - like illuminated raindrops going up instead of down, at dusk.

Leenia, where I live on the Piedmont we have nothing but yellow lightning bugs, but used to spend a lot of time camping over the NC mountains. The species over there were very different, and equally magical. White lights, smaller and somewhat subtle, hovering in drifts on the outskirts of the campfire. And later in the summer.

Science be dammed! Lightning bugs will always evoke magic.

Subject: RE: BS: Fireflies / Lightning Bugs
From: jacqui.c
Date: 18 Jul 14 - 07:28 AM

I saw my first fireflies last night. We have let the back edge of our yard go wild and that is where they were. That area is quite wet and we have had a fair amount of rain recently

Kendall saw them first and told me about them. They were all over the place, up high, down low and were beautiful to watch.

Subject: RE: BS: Fireflies / Lightning Bugs
From: GUEST,LynnT
Date: 18 Jul 14 - 09:37 AM

I still remember a wonderful evening in summer during my college years; I was home in Rochester NY from school in Toronto, and a group of friends drove way out to a field in Webster where a huge oak tree was full of fireflies, flashing in unison. Stars overhead, crickets keeping time, and the otherwise silent sweep of cool green light across the expanse of branches.

Thanks for the reminder!

Lynn

Subject: RE: BS: Fireflies / Lightning Bugs
From: robomatic
Date: 18 Jul 14 - 07:51 PM

We do not have them in Alaska. I remember them from New England, one of those little gifts of Nature and of Nature's God.

Subject: RE: BS: Fireflies / Lightning Bugs
From: Wesley S
Date: 18 Jul 14 - 08:41 PM

I can't remember the term that was used but some species do flash in unison. They tend to start and stop at the same time.

Subject: RE: BS: Fireflies / Lightning Bugs
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 19 Jul 14 - 03:20 PM

We get a few fireflies here, but I was overwhelmed by the non-flying ones that decked all the trees and bushes in Kentucky.
I had no idea.

Subject: RE: BS: Fireflies / Lightning Bugs
From: Janie
Date: 19 Jul 14 - 03:46 PM

synchronous fireflies, Wesley - (from a webpage regarding the Great Smoky Mountains.)

There are over 2000 species world wide, and 130 species of fire flies in North America. I'm pretty sure we are limited to only one species where I live, and that the females of that species also flies - no glow worms that I have ever seen here. Great Smoky Mountain National Park notes 19 species.

Subject: RE: BS: Fireflies / Lightning Bugs
From: Joe Offer
Date: 16 Aug 19 - 01:08 AM

I made a driving tour of the Midwest US over the last 6 weeks. I spent a lot of time in Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Nebraska, and Wyoming - and a little bit in Illinois and Indiana. The only place I saw fireflies was in North Platte, Nebraska.
Are the rest of you seeing fireflies at other locations this year?
-Joe-

Subject: RE: BS: Fireflies / Lightning Bugs
From: Mrrzy
Date: 16 Aug 19 - 09:21 AM

Virginia. Nope.

Subject: RE: BS: Fireflies / Lightning Bugs
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 16 Aug 19 - 10:05 AM

We've had them all summer long in large numbers here in North Texas. The woods across the road from me were torn up this summer so our population may be impacted, but the rest of us along the creek have left the wild areas alone and that should help the population survive until the woods grow back again (because Mother Nature knows what she wants, and she abhors a vacuum).

Subject: RE: BS: Fireflies / Lightning Bugs
From: leeneia
Date: 16 Aug 19 - 11:35 AM

We had fireflies earlier this summer in Missouri. Usual time, usual numbers.

We have a big, old crabapple tree with abundant suckers sprouting at its base. We keep the suckers, because fireflies like to fly from them into the tree and back.

Subject: RE: BS: Fireflies / Lightning Bugs
From: Ebbie
Date: 17 Aug 19 - 12:56 PM

As robomatic said above, we don't have fireflies in Alaska. But we DO have the Northern Lights- so there!

Subject: RE: BS: Fireflies / Lightning Bugs
From: open mike
Date: 19 Aug 19 - 12:48 AM

Bioluminecence at it's finest!!

I am so glad i got to see them as a kid in Nebraska...
we don't have 'em west of the rockies (as far as I know)
I took my grandkids to a farm not far from North Platte
and they got to see them and chase them in the fields,
but there were not as many in town.

I hear that their numbers are dwindling due to pesticides. sad.

https://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/animals/stories/fireflies-12-things-you-didnt-know-about-lightning-bugs

Subject: RE: BS: Fireflies / Lightning Bugs
From: Bill D
Date: 20 Aug 19 - 12:02 PM

There were many in the MD suburbs of DC this summer. (late June...early July)

Subject: RE: BS: Fireflies / Lightning Bugs
From: Joe Offer
Date: 20 Aug 19 - 01:38 PM

Glad to hear that they are still around in so many places. It had been years since I last saw them, so I was thrilled to find them in Nebraska this summer.

Subject: RE: BS: Fireflies / Lightning Bugs
From: CupOfTea
Date: 23 Aug 19 - 07:22 AM

I was surprised to find out that not every place has fireflies, as the places I've traveled in summertime have had them, just never considered they weren't universal like the peskier sorts of insects. The event that er... sparked... This revelation was some friends at the Scottish Harp School that happens in June at the Highland Games in the Oberlin area. The Scottish teacher had never seen the like, and exclaimed: " There ARE faeries at the bottom of the garden!" I think on that expression of delight when I see them now. It has been a usual firefly summer in northern Ohio - every night, but not great quantities.

Joanne in Cleveland