If they don't "light up" how are they fireflies? <sort of kidding, sort of not>

You know, I guess on that technicality, you're right!

To the "sort of not kidding" part, they are in the same family as the light up ones, Lampyridae. Some of them use the flashing butts to find mates, others, like these, fly during the day and use scent.

It makes sense that you'd see more of them, with the moisture we've been having. Is it heartless of me to be disappointed that they're not the nightlight kind? Regardless, they're garden-friendly, right? Not destructive little vermin?

I was just woefully recalling the wonderful lightenin' bug just last night. I'm an NC native whose been in CO now for 2 years, and I sure do miss those little critters!

Oh I remember them from the time I lived in Illinois as a child! Miss them!!

I have heard there are some parts of Colorado that have them, but the conditions have to be just right for them to live/stay. I found a firefly sighting site awhile back, and there are some listed for various parts of Colorado. Hasn't been updated in awhile though: http://www.burger.com/ffrepco.htm

I just looked up 'fireflies that don't light', and found this site: http://insects.about.com/od/beetles/a/10-Cool-Facts-About-Fireflies.htm
Lots of interesting stuff there! Like some fireflies are cannibals, or synchronize their flashes, etc. Maybe yours, Zach, apply to #5:
Not all adult fireflies flash.
Fireflies are known
for their blinking light signals, but not all fireflies flash. Some
adult fireflies, most notably those that inhabit the western areas of
North America, don't use light signals to communicate. Many people
falsely believe that fireflies don't exist west of the Rockies, since
flashing populations are rarely seen there.

For those of us who miss them, maybe this video will help a little:

https://youtu.be/T6QiKnTht3s

Marj

One of the things I miss the most about my native Michigan are the fireflies. Overall, though, I'll take Colorado's significantly less buggy climate any day over the flying insect paradise that is Michigan!

Oh, Zach, those are NOT the fireflies my Momma used to know and not the ones I know and love, either. lol I was all excited when I read your thread title, thought that just maybe they had arrived here - I'm still waiting for the Cardinal to get here too. I think I will be waiting in vain for either of these things to occur. Still, it is cool that you found some of their relatives here; perhaps there is still hope!

Lightning bugs like warm, humid areas, with the emphasis on humid. Notusually what Colorado is all about, despite our experiences this spring, so they aren't likely to migrate here en masse, but apparently they can actually be found in Colorado in some isolated places near streams and such. With all of this rain, it is a wonder that they didn't show up in our yards as well this year, but no such luck, and the humidity isn't likely to last so they wouldn't do well when our normal environment returns (hoping that what we have experienced thus far this growing season is not the new normal!)

Here is a brief article that might be of interest - Are There Fireflies In Colorado? http://www.extension.org/pages/41901/are-there-fireflies-in-colorado#.VYL8f03bLiI

I grew up in New England where we definitely had the "real" Lightning Bugs. I remember watching them flying above fields in Vermont, catching them in jars in Rhode Island (and of course letting them go unharmed not too much later) and just enjoying their light shows during my childhood. They really are quite magical, even if the light show is all about sex and procreation. :-P

Holly

For all of you reminiscing about the lightning bugs back east, well, They DO live here in Colorado, though, they are extremely rare, and populations I think are either not long lived, or, extremely mobile. One night they are there, then the next, never to be seen again!

As a native Coloradoan, we never had the experience of "growing up" with them, but, when we would go to Oklahoma to see family, we were amazed by them!

As far as I know, they are pretty much garden neutral. They apparently eat "pollen and plant sap" but I think there is never really enough of them to cause too much damage by sucking.

Holly, did you know that before the early 1900's there was not a single blue jay or white tailed deer in Colorado? They started to follow the forest corridors that sprang up along the rivers and towns after we put in flood mitigation and planting trees in a previously treeless landscape. Some scientists are starting to think that, more recently, barred owls have done the same thing. Following the habitat that humans have created to reach the Pacific Northwest and having disastrous results to the population of spotted owls. So, who knows, maybe sometime in the future Colorado will be home to cardinals and fireflies. Though, what that means for native species may or may not be so "cool" as seeing them light up the roads and visit our bird feeders.

I absolutely know what you mean, Zach. I have commented about this before and no doubt will again - must be my "get up on my soapbox" thing, lol: Humankind's stamped footprint on our planet has seldom been a positive thing for either the planet or for the rest of the inhabitants of our world. We have helped to eliminate native species everywhere we have ever lived, either by introducing non-native competitors, plant and/or animal, or by hunting/gathering them into extinction, or by just destroying and/or changing their habitat so they can no longer survive where they once were native.

So, as much as I would love to have such things as lightning bugs and Cardinals back in my life, I can do without the environmental changes that would have to occur for that to happen, so I really hope that it does not happen. Not sure what native species would be replaced by these species, either. Sadly, we can't go back in time to see how the world used to be before we became the dominant species of Earth; it must have been quite marvelous.

Holly

I'm on the soap box with you guys! I've been restraining myself from replying to your comments here, 'cause if I start I'm gonna go off the deep end on a RANT! As long as there's money to be made, the effects to the environment are irrelevant to most people!

In the last few years I've been doing tours on the Ute Mountain Tribal Park (Anasazi ruins) and have come to know a few of the Tribal members fairly well, and as I learn more of their culture and their respect for the Earth, the effects of "our" disregard for Mother Earth are magnified even more! Money is clearly more important than protecting the only place future generations will need to live!

No rant, but if you want a look at what I'm talking about, check out this 14 minute video of a presentation given at the U. N. The English translation starts at about 4 minutes! You can also go to a transcription of the presentation at the link in the description.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=XaujX_Rtch8

We have one Earth, one Sky, one Water,
Skybird

P.S. I grew up in northern Illinois. There aren't many things I miss about the place---but lightening bugs in the evening are one of the things that I DO miss!

EDITED to add: I discovered the link to the transcript on the video no longer works, but in case anybody is interested, the transcript is here:

http://www.indigenousaction.org/wp-content/uploads/COUNCIL_FUKUSHIMA_STATEMENT_OCT_2013.pdf

This is my rant, and apologies in advance for that, and also
for taking this in a direction that you may or may not agree or feel
comfortable with. I didn’t have any idea, when I first started this thread
about “fireflies” (even if they are a touch more lackluster than many of you
remember from back east) that it would turn into an in depth discussion of
philosophy, ecology, and environmental ethics. However I am glad that it did.

This is a
conversation that EVERYONE should be having as we look upon the state of the
world, and particularly nature today. If we ever have any hope of even TRYING
to correct the immense injustice humans have exacted upon planet earth, we MUST
talk about these things, we can’t just sit around and wait for someone else to come
along and come up the answers. We must start to look for answers now, and we
can’t make any meaningful gains or progress without serious, thoughtful,
discussion.

I have no illusion that that we are going to make any great
leaps forward in a day, or a year, or a decade or maybe a century. I hold no
hope that, even my lifetime, we will see much of a change at all. But that
ought not prevent us from taking the first steps towards working for the
solution.

I do not believe in laying blame for what we have done. I do not believe that
it is in the best interest of progress. What our parents, grandparents, great
grandparents so on and so on, did was the best they could do with the
information and the culture at hand. It is our job, not to demonize their
actions, but to learn from them and try to find a way to fix the mistakes they
made as best we can and prevent them from continuing into the future. As
Skybird said, we have but one earth, one sky, and one water. We don’t get a “do
over” this is it. This is we have to pass on to our children, and to posterity after
them.

Skybird, I am in awe of that presentation and very glad you
shared it with us. I see a lot of parallels between the traditional beliefs the
Native Indians of this Continent and my own as a believer in the Word of God
and Jesus Christ. To them, they look towards their Creator and his original instructions.
For me, those instructions are found in the Book of Genesis. In Gen. 1:26 God
says to us:

“Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them
have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and
over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that
creeps on the earth.”

Unfortunately, many have taken this to mean that God gave us the land
to do with as we please. To subdue it to own selfish whims and desires
regardless of the consequences.After all, didn’t God GIVE us the
land? Didn’t He say, quite clearly, that we are to hold dominion over every
living thing He had created? The answer is yes, the land DOES belong to us. But
when God gave us “dominion” over His creation He was not giving the green light
for the ruination thereof. What He gave us was responsibility. We have a scared covenant with the Lord to be stewards
over His creation. To respect and cherish and take care of it. When God gave us dominion over the Earth, He was
entrusting its well-being to us. It was not a way of saying “Well, I made it,
so now do whatever you want with it, I don’t care.” The divine mandate for man to dominate the
natural world is a sacred trust, not a carte blanche for destructiveness.

What we see, though is quite the opposite. We take this marvelous
creation built by God and exploit and destroy and neglect and take advantage of
it. We scoop up large swaths of prairie by the bucketful and in its place
deposit homes and shopping centers and sky rises. We poison the water and the
soil and the air. We topple mountains and eviscerate forests. We wield our
dominion over the plants and animals that share this place with us like a
despotic ruler, merely to fulfill our own greedy and selfish desires. We are
told it’s the progress of man, but how much progress can we have before we have
nothing left to make it with?

Currently, the State of Colorado is embroiled with the Federal Government over
the listing of the sage grouse as threatened and endangered. We say that
protecting industry is more important than protecting birds. We say that our
children’s future depends on a vibrant economy, and to an extent I get that. But
what kind of future is it in a world devoid of wild things? I for one believe
my children will much worse off in a world without sage grouse than they would
in a world with a little less change in their bank accounts.

I've seen them. I was one of the few to report them before on that link mentioned, here in Loveland. My friend has them sometimes up where he lives. Up the canyon towards Estes Park. We caught a jar of them once.

Oh! How cool, keen, that you posted about your fireflies on that site! Great to know there are around :) Do you see them every year?

Marj

How cool Keen! We have a group come out every Tuesday night at the park looking for them but they've never found any lol. It's somewhat surprising though we have plenty of wet, humid habitat alongside the creek and a constantly saturated sedge meadow.

It will be an awful thing if the only non-human animals left on Earth can only be found in zoos - or picture books. Of course, it isn't likely that Homo sapiens will be around at that point if the planet's inhabitants have been so reduced. Despite our arrogance, I don't think we can survive without the complex interaction of all the plants and animals on this planet; we are supposed to be part of that interaction, too, not above it and superior to it. As we continue to kill off bits and pieces of our environment, whether in the name of progress or profit, we are dooming ourselves and every other living creature here. Pretty easy to get pretty depressed when you think of the state of the world! I try to take care of the tiny bit of the planet earth that I "own" and hope for the best.

You are lucky to have seen lightning bugs here in Colorado, keen. I hope you get to experience them again. And maybe someday the rest of us will, too, if we just happen upon the right spot....

Holly

I don't see them every year. But i don't look for them every year. But, it's nice to know they are around. Even if in small quantities.