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27 May 12 - 09:06 PM (#3356340) Subject: BS: LIghtning Bug/Firefly time. From: Janie Saw my first of the season about a week ago, and tonight they are at last out in full force. Sat outside for the longest time, watching and remembering. There are, of course, my own childhood memories of catching lightning bugs, but the memories that moved me most were of summer nights chasing across backyards with my son during those long innocent years of his early childhood and latency period. Seeing the magic in the world again through his eyes and smile. I was tempted to get up and catch a few as I remembered. I guess there is some magic we never get too old to believe in. |
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27 May 12 - 09:12 PM (#3356342) Subject: RE: BS: LIghtning Bug/Firefly time. From: gnu Thanks. Wonderful post! Made me remember and smile. |
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28 May 12 - 10:28 AM (#3356359) Subject: RE: BS: LIghtning Bug/Firefly time. From: Charley Noble We haven't seen them this year. They were out in force last year. Their appearance seems really hard to predict. Charley Noble, from Midcoast Maine |
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28 May 12 - 10:31 AM (#3356362) Subject: RE: BS: LIghtning Bug/Firefly time. From: maeve They were here last night, Charley. I'm sure you'll see them soon! We'll avoid grass cutting in the orchard for a while to give them time to reproduce. Lovely post, Janie. We also love to watch them. |
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28 May 12 - 10:55 AM (#3356376) Subject: RE: BS: LIghtning Bug/Firefly time. From: Bill D Ah yes... childhood memories. Jars with holes punched in lids.... and the odor of fireflies is still locked in my brain cells. In recent years, our July Open Sing has been at Nancy King's house, as she has this back yard surrounded by various trees & shrubbery. After one round, when it is dark, we go out and are visually serenaded by thousands of fireflies... in multiple layers. (Different types have different heights they prefer... and flash in different patterns.) We get some nice ones at my house, but Nancy's is like an arena where the Firefly Symphony is performing the 1812 Overture. |
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28 May 12 - 11:26 AM (#3356394) Subject: RE: BS: LIghtning Bug/Firefly time. From: Ebbie Living in the west - and now, in the north - one does not see fireflies. When I lived in Virginia I was charmed by them. Question: What does the firefly actually do? What does it eat? |
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28 May 12 - 11:36 AM (#3356397) Subject: RE: BS: LIghtning Bug/Firefly time. From: maeve For Ebbie- here, ...and here. |
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28 May 12 - 01:22 PM (#3356446) Subject: RE: BS: LIghtning Bug/Firefly time. From: gnu "Adults live just long enough to reproduce." That sucks. |
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28 May 12 - 01:31 PM (#3356451) Subject: RE: BS: LIghtning Bug/Firefly time. From: Penny S. Like glow-worms, which spend two years eating snails - same method as fireflies, and then a week when the females set themselves up to be visible for part of the evening and the males fly blundering about in the dark trying to find them. The males only glow faintly in two small spots when disturbed. The larvae ditto. If the female fails to get a male by the end of a week, she crawls off into the soil, lays all the unfertilised eggs and expires. Tough. Penny |
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28 May 12 - 04:37 PM (#3356540) Subject: RE: BS: LIghtning Bug/Firefly time. From: Janie That is true for any number of insect species, gnu. I'm clueless about the consciousness of insects, but if they have thoughts beyond instinctive imperative, I do not doubt they experience their lives as worth living. |
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28 May 12 - 06:20 PM (#3356573) Subject: RE: BS: LIghtning Bug/Firefly time. From: Joe_F "I chanced to end my three months' visit [to the U.S.] in the same district of the Berkshires where it had begun. Now it was high summer.... At night there were fireflies to remind us that this was in the latitude of Madrid. Thunderstorms did not disconcert them, and I would watch their flash vanish in the superior brilliancy of 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 sparkling in the warm rain and the thunder is the latest of my American impressions, and the loveliest." -- E. M. Forster (1947) |
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28 May 12 - 07:25 PM (#3356597) Subject: RE: BS: LIghtning Bug/Firefly time. From: Ebbie Hey! I didn't realize they were beneficial to us. Why don't we have them in the west? |
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28 May 12 - 08:16 PM (#3356612) Subject: RE: BS: LIghtning Bug/Firefly time. From: pdq There are numerous species of Lampyridae in the West but many are small, uncommon or do not give off light. There are actually 29 described species in cold ol' Canada. Lampyride prefer high humidity and warm weather. |
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28 May 12 - 08:27 PM (#3356615) Subject: RE: BS: LIghtning Bug/Firefly time. From: Stilly River Sage I never saw them out west either, but when I visited my great aunts at their home in Pennsylvania they had them and would tell me about growing up with them. Here in Texas I live in a creek bottom and they love the area. Walk just at dusk and the yards with dark greenery are the perfect backdrop to the glow. I always figure the yards where they are most prominent are the ones that don't use chemicals to kill insects. My yard just hums with the things! SRS |
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28 May 12 - 08:43 PM (#3356620) Subject: RE: BS: LIghtning Bug/Firefly time. From: pdq Texas has a couple of species of click beetles that glow like fireflies. The light comes from two spots on the thorax. |
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28 May 12 - 09:30 PM (#3356630) Subject: RE: BS: LIghtning Bug/Firefly time. From: Dan Schatz My son said he saw one last night where we were in the Pennsylvania mountains. I haven't seen any yet. Saw a bear cub, but it wasn't glowing.... Dan |
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28 May 12 - 09:36 PM (#3356631) Subject: RE: BS: LIghtning Bug/Firefly time. From: Janie The North Carolina mountains are home to a different species than here on the Piedmont, which is the same species as inhabits all of West Virginia, mountains or no. In the NC mountains, the light of the fireflies is whiter, and the individual lights are smaller, but they cluster more. They are drawn by the light of a campfire in the deep forest, hovering just outside the light of fire, late into the night. Here on the Piedmont, and in my experience throughout West Virginia, be it in the mountains or in the hills and valleys of the Appalachian Plateau, the fireflies have a bright yellow light, do not tend to cluster, appear earlier, starting at dusk, slowly rise toward the trees, and have found their sweeties or given up for the night by the time it is full dark. But pshaw on all of this. If you got 'em, go enjoy your summer night. Iffen you don't got 'em, then your land and environment must offer other magic. Go enjoy that. |
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29 May 12 - 10:00 AM (#3356784) Subject: RE: BS: LIghtning Bug/Firefly time. From: Donuel I was caught in a rainstorm, the start of Hurricane Agnes, while inside a screen tent house. as the screens of the tent became a membrane of a thin wall of water, each square in the screen became a tiny lens that magnified light. Fireflies flocked to the tent for refuge and soon hundreds of them were flashing, each flash magnified my millions of water lenses on the wet screen created such a brilliant light show that it deserves to repeated if only to present on you tube. The recreation would have the fire flies on the inside of course. |
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29 May 12 - 10:06 AM (#3356793) Subject: RE: BS: LIghtning Bug/Firefly time. From: Bobert We've had 'um fir about a week down here in the Charlotte area... Real nice to sit out and just let the light show happen all around you... B~ |
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30 May 12 - 07:19 AM (#3357182) Subject: RE: BS: LIghtning Bug/Firefly time. From: CupOfTea Fireflies had always been a part of an Ohio summer, though much reduced in the DDT years. It never crossed my mind that every place didn't have them until I heard the story of a Scottish harpist who came to Oberlin for the Scottish music summer school. SHE had never seen one and was heard to exclaim "Ohhhh! There ARE faeries at the bottom of the garden!" I loved that reaction. I think Craig Johnson's "New Harmony" captures that feeling of them being a part of life so well: Evening hillsides, summertime The jars we filled with fireflies... Joanne in Cleveland |