#CATCHING LIGHTNING BUGS HOW TO#

If you burn wood to heat your home or enjoy a backyard fire in your fire pit, you’re all set. Start a Woodpileįireflies, like many insects, appreciate the secure hiding place afforded by a woodpile. Fireflies will happily hang out here during the day. Soak a few pieces of bark or wood in water and set them away from high traffic areas in your yard. Not only do fireflies appreciate ponds and other water features, but they also enjoy hiding in damp places. Also doubles as a water park with no lines. You could even do something as simple as turning on the water sprinkler for a little while at dusk. However, if you don’t want to go through the fuss of adding a pond, you could always put in a small decorative water feature or self-contained fountain. Of course, there are plenty of other great reasons to put in a pond.

Add a Water Feature Even if you can’t put in a large pond, you still have options.įireflies love water.

If you’re worried about giving ticks a place to hide, you can let the boundaries of your yard or even a small portion of the yard further away from your house get good and shaggy while keeping the areas closest to your home trimmed. Or you could go all out and turn your yard into a wildflower meadow – firefly city! If you want to get serious about fireflies, consider rewilding a portion of your lawn as a safe haven for bugs in general. You can always trim walkways and around buildings. One of the simplest things you can do to attract fireflies to your yard is to let your grass grow. Look, if you’ve read Rural Sprout long enough, you know we’re all about turning your lawnmower into a dusty relic that sits at the back of your shed. Let Your Lawn Grow Out Wait! Let it grow.

#CATCHING LIGHTNING BUGS HOW TO#

So, let’s take a look at how to get more of these beautiful beetles to hang out in your backyard. They will happily feast on slugs and snails around your yard. Why Attract Fireflies?Īside from the obvious memorable summertime evenings you’ll enjoy, fireflies are natural predators. The fliers are the males, and the fireflies that stay safely on the ground are the females. You may have noticed that some of them spend the evening flying around, while others prefer to stay on the ground or shorter shrubs and grasses. So, which of the 2,000 species are you?ĭid you know the pattern of flashes used by a firefly is to attract a mate within their species? Each lightning bug species has its own special “morse code” to help them tell who’s a probable mate and who isn’t. This explains why you’ll see them in droves on humid summer evenings. They can be found in both the Americas and Asia and are attracted to naturally moist environments.

These happy little bugs aren’t flies, but rather, they’re beetles. There are over 2,000 species of fireflies. If you’re serious about attracting these summertime visitors to your yard, it helps to know a little bit about them first. Not the most picturesque childhood memory, but it’s a fun one nonetheless. And both of us managed to squash a few in our sleep, smearing fluorescent bug guts in our hair. In reality, we both woke up covered in lightning bug poop. We figured we could enjoy a private laser light show from the comfort of our sleeping bags. We got the brilliant idea of catching fireflies and releasing them into the tent. I recall one summer when my friend and I were planning to sleep in my tent in the backyard. What child hasn’t drifted off to sleep with a jar of blinking firefly captives on their nightstand? Fly free, little lightning bug! I myself have countless fond memories of running barefoot in the cool, wet grass after dark, chasing these tiny green blurs. With their habit of hovering within arms-reach of small children, this bug has a special connection with kids everywhere. No matter what you called them in your neck of the woods, their arrival usually coincided with the end of the school year, camping trips, and backyard barbeques that went well into the evening. How many Rural Sprout Readers remember scenes like this from your childhood? If you grew up in rural America, a big part of summertime was fireflies.

Catching lightning bugs