One night in ft Gordon we were doing an FTX and we got out there late and set up the tents in the dark, n in a field of tall grass. No sooner than the tents were set up, an intense rainstorm came through and dumped a metric fuckton of rain in 15-20 minutes. And as quickly as it started, it was over. Afterwards there were so many fireflies it looked like a fantasy movie. I had never seen anything like that. I’ve been all over the world, hell I grew up in Boulder, on of the most beautiful places on earth, but I’ve never seen anything even close to that. It was absolutely magical. And my kid gets so excited to see 2 or 3 and it makes me want to cry.
I have participated in No Mow May for three years now. I also have a spot in the yard I let be free (weeded it for invasives) for the same amount of time.
This summer, for the first time since I have lived here, exsists an abundance of fireflys in my yard. They are everywhere, in a way I’ve never seen since I was a child.
No Mow May, (even if just a part of your yard) gives insects a place. Bugs live in the leaves and natural debris, by keeping it undisturbed, from fall to winter is important for many bugs’ survival.
If you like bugs, consider dedicating space in your yard for them to live. Don’t keep grass in the typical american perfect lawn way. I suggest not to spray, and look at native grasses and plants first when seeking your landscaping needs.
I’ve noticed a real difference this year in my yard. Maybe its some coincidence, I don’t know. Either way I’m happy to see lightning bugs again
I’ve been so happy to see them in our yard this year. Enough so that I’ve stopped clearing brush just in case that’s why they’re here in such numbers. I haven’t seen them like this in a decade or more.
You would not believe your eyes if ten fireflies lit up the world as I fell asleep
Go minnesota!
I understood this reference.
Stop raking your leaves
Oh yeah? What next, don’t mow my lawn every day?
Next you’re gonna say that my excessive pesticide use harms the insects I like
Y’all have trees?
Yes and I planted some of em :3
You can get them fresh from the factory. Sure, they need 96 batteries each, but beats all that nasty wood and bugs.
It’s easier just to buy my air from O’Hare Air.
My kid saw bottled oxygen at a sporting goods store and said it was dumb. Then he asked if we could buy it. $20!!! For a 25(?) oz bottle.
Lanternfiles, on the other hand… Oh, wait, oh fuck.
Pasolini wrote a famous essay in 1975, “The Disappearance of the Fireflies,” which, at that time, was already starting to become very noticeable. Of course, the essay was really about capitalism.
Personally, outside my childhood in the countryside, I noticed fireflies in the outskirts of a largish city some 20 years ago, then nothing for a very long time, and then I saw a few when I lived for a brief period of time in a really remote place, like an hour from the nearest highway. No trains anywhere near, too.Off-topic, but if you don’t know Pasolini, I urge you to read his last interview which seems particularly gloomy as it appears to foreshadow his own death just a few hours after.
One memorable quote:I listen to the politicians – all the politicians – with all their little presumptions and I turn into a mad man as they prove they do not know which country they are talking about, they are as far away as the moon. And together with them there are the men of letters, the sociologists and the experts in any kind of field.
Used to catch them growing up. There would be thousands of them periodically blinking in the yard and across the field every night. It was pretty and serene.
I saw one just the other night when I let my dogs out before going to bed. It was so surprising that I had to wait a minute and verify I wasn’t just seeing things. It was a real life lightning bug. It was a happy sad moment.
I can’t remember when I last saw fireflies. They used to be quite common 25 years ago when I was a kid. Damn, time flies and I’m getting old. And fire apparently doesn’t fly any more.
Damn, fireflies too?
Firefly == lightning bug
Upon further investigation, it appears that only SOME species of fireflies are at risk of extinction. Others are so common they are of “least concern”.
If foreign propaganda bots are bombarding us with doomer memes to instill apathy and depression in the younger generation, this fits.
Maybe, but I haven’t seen one in decades in our area. Used to see them every summer. I’ve thought about that for a while, even before this.
Just to be sure, have you lived at the same address for all these years? I haven’t, so it’s hard to compare then & now for me.
leave them leaves unraked
Or create leaf mold (a pile of sticks and leaves) in targeted areas of your yard/property that are ideal for breeding fireflies and other desired native insects/spiders. Especially if you live in an HOA community that requires reqular raking and can hide the leaves under bushes/shrubs/trees/garden beds as mulch.
Raking of leaves isn’t really the problem so much as is the complete removal of leaves from the property & neighborhood (which also removes the nutrients from the local top soil).
Same here, but if I drive a few miles out of the city, they’re out and about.
Is this the most meta depression bot?
They were everywhere when I was a kid. I haven’t seen one in years.
They were so delightful, and I miss them.
I stopped mowing super regularly and my yard is full of em
Let the weeds grow, let the forest in. I’m in the Smokies fwiw
Yeah, fireflies lay eggs on dead leaves. The ultra-clean suburban yards are killing firefly populations, because people keep raking up the fireflies breeding material and throwing it away in plastic trash bags. A perfectly kept lawn is an ecological wasteland, and suburban trends have expanded that wasteland for miles at a time. It’s no wonder fireflies have struggled to survive.
Want to see fireflies? Stop raking your lawn. If you don’t like the way the leaves look, mulch them with a lawn mower early in the season, so they can blend in with the grass. But don’t just fucking rake them up and throw them away.
Same
They’re back, and they’re happy with my mess of a lawn.
I don’t think my lawn will ever look like a golf course, there was an above ground pool at one point so one area is packed densely and full of gravel sized rocks.
We threw down some clover, there’s wild strawberry, one spot has mint (I’ve been told trying to remove it is a sisyphusian task). It’s cozy now, and I guess the fireflies like cozy, and I like watching them from my patio.
Is the rocky area underperforming in terms of growth? Consider xeriscaping! Use drought and heat tolerant plants like succulents to fill in and color up an otherwise uninhabitable area
Definitely underperforming.
I let the plants that do grow there go to seed and it’s filled in a bit, but it’s not great.
I’m in Ontario and I don’t know if succulents will work, but I like them and can look into it.
This is fantastic and good advice, but I also remember them in great numbers 20+ years ago, and people were mowing their lawns then, too.
Mowing isn’t the issue; Raking leaves is. Fireflies lay eggs in the fall, on dead leaves. Since suburban HOAs require leaves to be raked and trashed, it removes the fireflies’ breeding grounds. If you don’t like leaves on your lawn, just fucking mulch them with your lawn mower instead of raking them. A perfectly raked yard is an ecological wasteland.
I think a lot more people use weed killers and other pesticides in their yards than previously as well, since they’re more commercially available. We even have “summer weed maintenance subscriptions” in my city for this (yeah, I know, ugh). I finally stopped using that stuff on my yard and I have a lot more critters in it than my neighbours.
While it’s better than keeping a barren monoculture lawn, keep in mind that letting things grow with no intervention will get you a lot of invasive species. If you want healthier habitat for your critters try to keep an eye on what’s growing and replace the bad stuff with native options.
I’m working on it :)
That’s not true for my yard. My calculated neglect results in an extremely drought tolerant yard of native species.
problem: the bad plant is native, and phototoxic
Yea, theres a big overgrown patch behind the house and we have them all over. It’s nice to see. I like to sit out and watch them while the sun goes down. It’s relaxing. Theres a bunch of other critters that come out around that time to so it’s interesting. I watched a couple of raccoons take apart my neighbors bird feeder last night.
Another bug I haven’t seen in forever is grasshoppers. I used to catch buckets of those things when I was a kid and I don’t think I’ve seen more than a couple in years.
Yeah i don’t see many grasshoppers either. Some, but very few.
They were everywhere in the mid-Atlantic 20 years ago.
I saw one little blinky buddy on my back door last night. I looked out, he was the only one. I shut my porch light off in hopes that he would wonder off and find some friends.
I mentioned in another comment that it must’ve been 8 to 10 years ago when I was sitting in the backyard of some bar in Brooklyn, in the middle of summer, where I saw the last one I ever saw. And I was sitting with a bunch of friends, and I pointed out that it was the only one, and that this might be the last one any of us ever see.
Now I made myself sad
YMMV but i still see lots right around dusk at the edges of wetland areas. Not denying they are threatened but there are still some places they are able to live and those places should be protected. Wetlands do a lot more for us ecologically and hydrologically speaking than just fireflies anyway and are one of the most important ecosystems to be protected.
We just moved to a house with over an acre and a creek that runs through the back yard and we have them all over the place right now.
My dog had never seen them before and i caught him this week trying to eat them. One would flash and he’d chomp towards it, then another would and he seemed confused on how it got over there so fast and hed chomp that direction. It was precious
I have cats just under a year old, this is their first summer with eyes open. We’ve had a few fireflies get into the house, and watching them go nuts once they notice this weird flashing bug has been the highlight of my night lately. All 5 of them running in a little pack, eyes wide. Every time they light up, all the cats stop and just stare. It blows their little minds, and I love it.
Sweet little murder beasts
Don’t rake your leaves
I don’t think I’ve ever seen fireflies, probably because of the Latitude I live at.
2009 radio compensated for it heavily, though.
I’ve only ever seen them at sea level, in warm and humid places, usually during the middle to later months of the summer.
For context, I grew up in the 80s and 90s as a kid, and that’s when you used to see a lot of them. But ever since then, they become more and more rare. I knew that, eventually, they’d probably go extinct. I realize this back in the 90s or something.
If I really think about it, the last time I saw one might’ve been between eight and 10 years ago. And I only saw one. And I was sitting in the backyard of a bar in Brooklyn, during a very hot humid summer night after it had been raining, and I was sitting with a bunch of friends and then mentioned to them that this may be the last firefly you ever see.
I really am sad that was right
I’ve seen two this year.
I’ve seen More bald eagles land in the yard year than I have seen lightning bugs.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen one. I now feel sad that I may never.
How often are you in a place and time and state of mind to stop and see the fireflies though? The problem is both ecological and cultural IMO.
I don’t think my state of mind has anything to do with whether or not I see fireflies, but the times and places I go haven’t really changed over the last 15 to 20 years. The number of fireflies I see at those times and in those places, on the other hand, has dramatically changed.
I had wondered why we always seemed to have some fireflies here and it turned out my hatred of raking and leaving the leaves under the bushes helped a lot!
Fight this by not bagging your leaves. Leave some for our buddies! https://blog.nwf.org/2024/09/leave-the-leaves-to-save-fireflies/
Leaf* some
capitalism will kill us all, starting with the smallest and most defenseless
Fireflies are fascinating and beautiful creatures. Another user mentioned donating to xerces society which is a great idea. Another thing that you can do if you are fortunate enough to own land is to replace your lawn (non-native, mowed grass) with native plants and leave the fallen leaves undisturbed.
I replaced my entire lawn with species native to my region and my entire yard is currently covered in multiple species of fireflies. It’s so magical to see all the different colors and flashing patterns. Mind you, I live in the city so it’s only my yard that is really providing for them. All my neighbors’ yards have either no fireflies or a few.
You don’t have to replace your entire lawn like I did. Just setting aside some space for our wildlife neighbors is better than nothing. Remember plants are the foundation of almost every food web. For me, it’s magical to go outside and see the new blooms and growth, look for new creatures that show up, and just walk the little paths in my small yard. In an age of ecologic collapse and climate change it gives me some sense that I can have a measurable, positive impact and that really helps me mentally.
What a beautiful paragraph to read. Thank you for sharing
That’s really nice of you to say. Thank you for your kindness!
I do not have a lawn, I have several ha of forest and grassland. I have about 25 nest boxes for wild birds, occupied 2/3 (last year I had a huge owl living in one!) and countless other nests, several snakes, snails and frogs, lynx and I see bear tracks and scats now and then. I keep bees and allow wasps to build wherever they like, there are lots of bumblebees everywhere and birds sure have something to eat. I mulch a lot and keep loads of rotting leaves. I mow with scythe when I absolutely have to clear small area. I know there are fireflies in Finland.
Never saw a single blink.
I don’t know European firefly species ranges. I’m fortunate enough to live in a region with multiple species ranges overlap. What species are in your region and what are their ranges?
Regardless, your land sounds beautiful. Thanks for being a good neighbor to the wildlife!
Source? :(
Please I need to know!
PS: Donate to them.
I’m so glad you posted this! As a current donor, I was about to do so myself.
Thank you for spreading awareness and helping keep our summers just a little more magical!
