The magic of fireflies is beginning
A firefly blinks yellowwhite and in a wink, at night, a part of the world’s made right.
So for the next few weeks, turn the lights off and go outside at night and watch the bioluminescence fly by while the tree crickets sing. They don’t sting or buzz. Lightning bugs bug you not. They only delight.
“They’re just starting,” said Ann Taylor, executive director of New Pond Nature Center in Redding, of the annual show.
Diane Swanson, executive director of the Pratt Nature Center in New Milford, said kids who attend summer nature camp there stay late on Thursdays to see thousands of fireflies flit across the landscape.
“It becomes a magical evening,” she said.
Amanda Branson, executive director of the Naromi Land Trust in Sherman, said she has an unmown slope at her house in Kent. On warm nights, her family goes outside to ramble, and watch.
“There’s lots of fireflies there,” Branson said. “It’s magic.”
There are about 2,000 species of fireflies in the world and about 170 in the United States.
The most common species in Connecticut is Photinus pyralis, aka, the common eastern firefly or the big dipper firefly, so named because of the males’ swooping J- curve flight. ( We call them flies out of consonance — they’re members of the beetle family.)
Sarah Lewis, professor of biology at Tufts University in Medford, Mass., and author of “Silent Sparks — The Wondrous World of Fireflies,” said we’re lucky. Connecticut is at the northern edge of the range for the big dipper.
“We don’t have them in Massachusetts,” she said. “Maybe climate change will bring them here.”
Here’s why we’re lucky: Photinus pyralis thrives in lots of places — in backyards, in fields, in forest glades, on highway medians.
“They’re kind of like the dandelions,” Lewis said. “They’re in forests. They’re in Central Park.”
And, they have a good long blink — a single blink, about three- tenths of a second, every five seconds or so. We get to see them.
When we see fireflies blinking, it’s during their two weeks of life as adults when they’re courting.
The males blink first to attract attention.
“It’s like an Italian serenading a lady on a balcony,” said Gail Ridge, an entomologist at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station in New Haven.
When females — the arbiters of evolution — find a blinking male they like, they flash him in return. They get together and mate. They then separate and start all over with new partners. After two or three weeks, the females lay eggs. Exhausted, depleted, their work done, male and females then die.
Fireflies know each other’s signaling patter, Ridge said. Where several species overlap, it allows each species to sort out who’s who.
The light in lightning bugs also protects them against predators. They release chemicals when attacked that give them a profoundly bitter taste. Birds learn when they see a firefly blinking to leave it alone.
In their underground, larval state, they’re still bioluminescent — hence, glow worms. They stay larvae for up to two years and are good for gardens, eating a variety of pests.
Where are the fireflies of yesteryear? There’s been much study showing some species in decline.
But not all of them — hardy species like our big dipper fireflies are generalists that can, luckily, live in lots of places, Lewis of Tufts University said.
But some species are habitat specific. Destroy that habitat — build a mall or housing development — and the fireflies are gone.
Pesticides are bad for fireflies as well. They can kill them outright and also poison their prey in the food chain — when a firefly larvae eats a slug that’s ingested pesticides, it harms them both.
Lewis said there’s also evidence that light pollution interferes with firefly breeding. Too much light and the females can’t pick up on the males’ signaling.
“The LED lights used in streetlights are wonderfully energy efficient and good for the environment,” Lewis said. “But they give off way more light than what’s needed.”
Good firefly practices are: Keep parts of your world a little wild and unmown. Don’t use pesticides. Cut down on the backyard floodlights.
You can also join the citizen science project Firefly Watch, run by the Massachusetts Audubon Society. To learn more, go www. massaudubon. org/ get- involved/ citizen- science/ firefly- watch
And, you can just go out at night and watch for yourself. We can never have enough magic.
“It’s absolutely beautiful,” said Taylor of New Pond Farm.