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Yup, lightning bugs. They eat rotting vegetation so like a wooded area. We have a lot of them and never use any pesticides. If there's a bad bug we need to kill we just squoosh it. Mostly we just live and let live with the bugs. We see them all summer long.
We see dozens of them every night emerging from the wooded areas that surround our backyard on 3 sides. It is beautiful especially when they blink in unison. If we are outside long enough we can watch them come from deep in the trees up to the lawn. We've seen an increase in the last couple weeks.
Is anyone here old enough to be able to do anecdotal comparisons of current firefly numbers versus their numbers in the past?
I saw five or six a few days ago in our backyard. (We don't use chemicals.)
The most incredible display I've ever seen in my life was when we stayed at a bed and breakfast in Intercourse, Pennsylvania (Amish country) on the way up for a visit home from NC to New York. It was probably 15 or so years ago.
There were two clusters of fireflies, and they were absolutely incredible. The swarms were about 10 feet high by 8 feet wide, and the hundreds (thousands?) of fireflies were only a few inches from each other.
They looked like many, many strings of white Christmas lights wandering the yard. It was unlike anything I've ever seen. The owners of the B&B said people from the UK seemed to be particularly interested in them.
I was in awe of the fireflies and felt quite fortunate to witness their beauty; maybe that's how they looked before everyone started using chemicals on their lawns? (And I'm assuming the Amish don't use chemicals -- but I don't know if they do or not. I read they do on crops, but I don't know about their lawns.)
Last edited by lovebrentwood; 06-18-2013 at 04:29 PM..
Lots of lightening bugs in my yard. My son loves to go out and catch them - he has a nice holder we got several years ago from the Museum of Life & Science which is much nicer than the old jars I had as a kid.
We have a lot in our yard (in Durham), although I think they were more plentiful in July. Our neighbors who are crazy with the lawn chemicals don't have any. You need to provide a habitat, a little brush, undergrowth, shrubs, etc. they're not going to love perfectly shorn and manicured lawn.
I wonder what the firefly population is like in the HOA communities with their rules about landscaping and smallish lots. I'm genuinely interested, not trying to be snarky. Can anyone chime in?
I'm in an HOA community and our yard is filled with them.My son was chasing them last night. There was even one out during the day-that was a first for me. Our yard is tree-lined and there is a lot of greenery in the neighborhood, so maybe we are not a typical HOA community?
We're in an HOA community, too, but we border wetlands to the back, a creek and acres of natural land to one side and a nice, wide tree line on the other and have nearly half an acre. We don't use pesticides on our lawn. There is a lot of decaying foliage, ferns and other vegetation under all those trees.
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