‘Nature’s fireworks’ basking in glow of a good year

QUINTON — A wealth of fireflies is turning every night in the Richmond area into the Fourth of July.

“They are nature’s fireworks,” said Chris Hobson, a state-employed biologist.

That delights Chris and Leslie Hobson’s three young children, who dash about the yard of their New Kent County home in pursuit of the slow-flying beetles.

“I just grab ’em, one hand,” said Ellie Hobson, 5.

Sister Olivia, 9, is more analytical.

“I usually go to the edge of the woods, where it’s, like, dark, and that’s where they’re at,” she said before taking off, brown ponytail bobbing, after a floating yellow-green light.

Lighting bugs have been doing a whole lot of blinking this season.

“It’s a banner year,” said Arthur Evans, a Richmond entomologist and author of a 2007 guide to North American insects. “They are all over the place and doing well, which is good to see.”

Eric R. Day, a Virginia Tech entomologist, concurred. He figures that a dry summer and fall last year gave baby fireflies a chance to develop. “Insects can die in a drop of rain, particularly when they are small,” Day said.

Then, this year’s wet spring created moist conditions favored by tiny creatures that young fireflies like to eat.

Fireflies are good to have around for reasons beyond their beauty. They are sensitive to pesticides and land disturbances — for example, the conversion of a hayfield into a subdivision.

“Seeing fireflies is an indication you’ve got a good, healthy habitat,” Day said.

Some scientists, citing anecdotal evidence, believe fireflies are in decline across much of the globe.

The Web site firefly.org, dedicated to firefly conservation, suggests the insects are disappearing because development is destroying their fields and forests, and artificial light is interfering with their flashes.

Evans and Day, however, said they were unaware of hard evidence of a widespread firefly decline.

Fireflies flash to court and attract mates. To them, the outdoors is like a singles bar where the power is out and you need a flashlight to find a partner.

In the Richmond area, the sparking is usually heaviest in June and the first two weeks of July. Sometimes you can see the lights as late as September.

Using chemical compounds in their tails, fireflies produce a cool, efficient light. Those in the air are mostly males.

After mating, females lay eggs on or near the ground. The young hatch as grubs about one-eighth-inch long, Day said. In spring, young fireflies transform themselves into the adults everyone knows.

Then the flashing starts all over again. The adults live just a few weeks — long enough to reproduce.

There are several firefly species in Virginia. We typically see fireflies that come from a handful of common species, Day said. They look alike in your hand but flash in different ways.

For example, one type creates a long, glowing flash — on and off, on and off. Another flashes three times rapidly, pauses, then flashes three more times.

The female of a particularly sneaky species will return the flashes of males from other species. “When they fly in, she eats them,” Day said. “It’s a tough life out there as a bug.”

You can sometimes get fireflies to come to you by reproducing their flash patterns with a flashlight, Day said.

Even people who dislike other insects fall for fireflies. “It’s certainly tied into a lot of pleasant memories for people,” Day said.

In the Hobsons’ yard on a recent evening, Ellie, Olivia and their 2-year-old brother, Grayson, made new memories. They snatched the bugs, put them in clear plastic containers, then eventually released them.

And why do they like fireflies so much? Ellie’s look suggested this was not a bright question.

“Because they blink,” she said.

Rex Springston is a staff writer for the Richmond Times-Dispatch.