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Lightning bugs
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this post was submitted on 06 May 2024
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Their decline has been so sad. I moved somewhere with fireflies in 2007. The first year they were everywhere. The second year less so and they were completely gone by 2010. I always tried to leave longer grassy areas for them but they were just... gone. It was so so so sad. I didn't grow up with them and that first summer was enchanted and magical.
I have great memories of walking down the road on a hot night with thousands of slowly blinking balls of light. The person who lives in that place now probably doesn't even know that fireflies are supposed to be in the area.
Lightning bugs have a multi-year lifecycle that includes living in fallen leaf matter, hunting for other bugs, before emerging in like 2-3 years. So they need places that don't haul away all of the fallen leaves/plant matter or use broad spectrum pesticides.
I've always kept all the leaves in rows along our fences for the lightning bugs to live in, which is also popular with the song birds hunting for bugs. That and don't do the broad pesticide treatments.
Yeah, mulching your leaves instead of bagging them is really what makes a difference for fireflies. And since suburbanization and HOAs often require (or at least heavily encourage) bagging leaves, it means the fireflies have nowhere to mature.
Stopped mowing our farm, lightning bugs are back in swarms. It's great.
I haven't seen a firefly since I was a small child. I've never really thought about them before, but it is kind of sad not seeing them. Generally I hate bugs, but fireflies are pretty.
We used to catch them in jars as kids growing up in rural south. Tired to see who could get the most, then release them and watch them all make a show.