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Do you have lightning bugs where you live?

theelfqueen

By theelfqueen,
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cintinative

cintinative

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When my husband moved here (Ohio) from Colorado, he commented on how loud it is here at night. There are not many insects in general where he was in CO, but especially not all the crickets, etc. that make all the noise here.  They also did not have lightning bugs in CO but they had them in FL where he lived and we have them here. 

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theelfqueen

theelfqueen

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Just now, cintinative said:

When my husband moved here (Ohio) from Colorado, he commented on how loud it is here at night. There are not many insects in general where he was in CO, but especially not all the crickets, etc. that make all the noise here.  They also did not have lightning bugs in CO but they had them in FL where he lived and we have them here. 

I went home to KC for a funeral a few summers ago and stayed with my cousin... I told her the sound of KC at night makes me homesick - crickets, cicadas and the low hum of air conditioners- we don't have any of those sounds! It sounds like summer! 

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happi duck

happi duck

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Yep!  We use both names pretty equally.

Sometimes on TV I'll see fancy houses with walls that open to the outside.  Do other places not have bugs?  Mosquitoes?   Bees?  Flies?

Just going in and out stuff gets in.  One time a caterpillar got in and made it halfway down the stairs!

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theelfqueen

theelfqueen

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6 minutes ago, happi duck said:

Yep!  We use both names pretty equally.

Sometimes on TV I'll see fancy houses with walls that open to the outside.  Do other places not have bugs?  Mosquitoes?   Bees?  Flies?

Just going in and out stuff gets in.  One time a caterpillar got in and made it halfway down the stairs!

In Colorado - we have bugs but a lot fewer than in Missouri where I grew up or Florida where DH grew up.  Low humidity... dry climate. 

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Spy Car

Spy Car

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I remember the magical quality of fireflies from the book Sam and the Firefly (a childhood favorite), but sadly we did not have fireflies in Los Angeles.

A couple years after I finished university I saw fireflies in person for the first time. I stayed with a friend who had a brownstone in South Philly and we traveled out to a party in Buck's County. Just at twilight the fireflies came out. It truly was a magical experience.

 

2012-10-30-15-16-48.jpg

 

I also experienced a similar magic in the waters here in California. A friend and I were out swimming as night fell in Avila Beach (near San Luis Obispo/Primo). As we moved in the water there was bioluminescence all around us. It was mind blowing.

Bill

 

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purpleowl

purpleowl

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I have seen isolated ones here and there where I live. We went to NC a couple of weeks ago, and there was a field behind the house we were staying at, and SO. MANY. FIREFLIES! I had always wondered how in the world people could possibly catch a whole jar full of them like in children's stories, but now I can see how that would be possible, lol.

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Grace Hopper

Grace Hopper

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35 minutes ago, Elizabeth86 said:

Side note. Do you all know about blue ghost fireflies? I'm going to try hard to go see them next year. 

Fantastic! Adding to my bucket list. 

3 minutes ago, Spy Car said:

I remember the magical quality of fireflies from the book Sam and the Firefly (a childhood favorite), but sadly we did not have fireflies in Los Angeles.

A couple years after I finished university I saw fireflies in person for the first time. I stayed with a friend who had a brownstone in South Philly and we traveled out to a party in Buck's County. Just at twilight the fireflies came out. It truly was a magical experience.

 

2012-10-30-15-16-48.jpg

 

I also experienced a similar magic in the waters here in California. A friend and I were out swimming as night fell in Avila Beach (near San Luis Obispo/Primo). As we moved in the water there was bioluminescence all around us. It was mind blowing.

Bill

 

I do think much depends on the habitat - gotta have green spaces to see them, regardless of what you call them. FWIW I’ve always heard folks use both terms but as kids we called them lightning bugs, Deep South. 
 

My favorite part of sailing the gulf coast is late summer night outings, when your boat’s wake is a glowing trail. I remember laying out crab nets off the dock in the morning, forgetting about them through a busy day, coming back after dark to pull up a dish full of little glowing jellies. Magical indeed. 

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Lady Florida.

Lady Florida.

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Yes but sightings are rare and you don't see many at one time. They were abundant in NJ even in the city when I lived there a lifetime ago as a kid. The last time I saw lightning bugs - and that's what we always called them - was 8 years ago in Tennessee when we went for dh's family reunion.

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Kassia

Kassia

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1 hour ago, Pam in CT said:

Yes and they are MAGIC.

Yes, I love them.  I have insomnia and come downstairs in the middle of the night and they are blinking and lighting up outside our big bay window.  It makes being up much less unpleasant.  

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Kalmia

Kalmia

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I have lifelong memories of them and look forward to their magic every summer. They do prefer messy yards and fields to manicured ones. And they are becoming rarer each year. Both my mother and my father call them lightning bugs, people in my adult life generally call them fireflies. I use both terms. In the Great Smokey Mountains in TN there are synchronous fireflies that all flash simultaneously. There is a lottery each year to get to see them and there are thousands more entrants than spots.

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edelweiss

edelweiss

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Yes, we do.  One of the few good things about living in Ohio.  We call them lightning bugs/fireflies pretty interchangeably. We have lots of them.  I love looking in our backyard at night. When my girls were younger, they loved catching them and putting them in a jar for an hour or so and then letting them go. They are super easy to catch.  They basically hover around.

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Grace Hopper

Grace Hopper

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For a few years we had neighbors that used one of those mosquito fogging services starting when the Zika virus panic was rampant. We started seeing far fewer bats and fireflies. This year, however, after those neighbors moved out a little over a year ago, the fireflies seem to have rebounded and there have been so many, it’s joyful. Haven’t seen many bats return yet, though, which makes me sad. 

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TravelingChris

TravelingChris

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2 hours ago, Elizabeth86 said:

Side note. Do you all know about blue ghost fireflies? I'm going to try hard to go see them next year. 

Thanks  for mentioning these.  They aren't too far for us and I will make a plan to go see them.  My dh dismissed it, saying I would probably have to hike a long way- trying to dismay me since I can't.  I will find a b&b, cottage for rent, campsite etc near these.

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Elizabeth86

Elizabeth86

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7 minutes ago, TravelingChris said:

Thanks  for mentioning these.  They aren't too far for us and I will make a plan to go see them.  My dh dismissed it, saying I would probably have to hike a long way- trying to dismay me since I can't.  I will find a b&b, cottage for rent, campsite etc near these.

I feel a wtm forum meet up! I'll bring some baked goods. 🤣

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kbutton

kbutton

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I had heard they really didn't live west of the Mississippi, but this article says it's more complicated than that: https://xerces.org/blog/status-of-fireflies-in-the-united-states-and-canada

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If you have similarly thought that you live in a place devoid of fireflies, you may be surprised to learn that fireflies actually occur in all of the lower forty-eight states and in many Canadian provinces. If you live in the West (as I do now) and wonder why you have never seen a firefly, it is probably because many of our western species are active during the day, potentially communicating with pheromones rather than light. In other species, the larvae or adult females may glow, but adult males do not produce light.

Take, for example, the Douglas fir glowworm (Pterotus obscuripennis), whose larvae and flightless females can be found casting a soft, greenish light in its namesake forests. Flashing species may be rare west of the Rockies, but they can still be found in some pockets. Only a few years ago, researchers in Utah were excited to find populations of flashing fireflies in marshy areas of the desert—living confirmation after a thirty-year search.

 

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