My nephew wants us to more accurately call them “blinkin’ beetles” as they aren’t flies.
He’s not winning.
-jk
My wife and I have often lamented that there aren't nearly as many fireflies as we saw when we were kids (yes, we walked three miles uphill to school each way)....but this year we're having a real explosion of them.
Is anyone else seeing this? Perhaps our situation is due to our Great Tree Debacle of 2017...we now have about three acres, formerly filled with big pine trees, that are just growing wild, no grass, just brush and young trees, and the fireflies seem to love it, hundreds of them out each evening...birds are enjoying it too, all kinds of inscrutable nesting action in there.
My nephew wants us to more accurately call them “blinkin’ beetles” as they aren’t flies.
He’s not winning.
-jk
My sister's kids would catch them and then call the jar their campfire. Smokey the Bear would probably have approved of this kind of fire.
We’ve got a lot of trees and live on a few dark acres so we usually have a nice number this time of year. They’ve just started to really pop the last few weeks.
Sage Grouse
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'When I got on the bus for my first road game at Duke, I saw that every player was carrying textbooks or laptops. I coached in the SEC for 25 years, and I had never seen that before, not even once.' - David Cutcliffe to Duke alumni in Washington, DC, June 2013
I grew up in the suburbs of NY so use the two terms interchangeably, as the article notes, though would lean towards fireflies. As a kid I used to love them - we would get a plastic container, poke tiny holes in it, then catch them. I now live in the city so do not see them.
There is a children's clothing brand called Chasing Fireflies which I think is wonderful branding - brings back many happy memories.
Lightnin' bugs are out in NC! Someday, I want to see the synchronized ones and the blue ones in the NC mountains.