<p>Realized there are no fireflies out tonight (outside of Philly) Then read this:
[Experts</a> fear fireflies are dwindling - Environment - MSNBC.com](<a href=“http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26471876]Experts”>http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26471876)</p>
<p>How about you?</p>
<p>As a child growing up in Philadelphia, I remember seeing fireflies all the time. Years ago I asked an entomologist why I was seeing so few… The answer: fireflies breed in dead leaves. Rake up all your dead leaves, no fireflies.</p>
<p>[pennsylvania</a> firefly](<a href=“http://www.fcps.edu/islandcreekes/ecology/pennsylvania_firefly.htm]pennsylvania”>http://www.fcps.edu/islandcreekes/ecology/pennsylvania_firefly.htm)</p>
<p>In central Kentucky–no more fireflies. :(</p>
<p>That’s so sad - but we still have plenty on my small little acreage outside Atlanta. What a great reason not to rake leaves!</p>
<p>Frogs are declining, now fireflies. What next?</p>
<p>I have seen virtually none this year. I just got back from Massachusetts and didn’t see any there either. (The mosquitoes are out in full force though!)</p>
<p>We too still have them northeast of Atlanta</p>
<p>I do not think we ever had fireflies here in our neck of the woods, but I have seen much fewer bees this summer… Mosquitos were very vicious, though.</p>
<p>We had very few bees early in the summer, but the last few weeks the population soared. With bees, it’s important to have food available for them all summer, so it’s useful to plant things like bee balm, hyssop, lemon balm, lavender–plants with lots of blossoms for a long time.</p>
<p>(I’ve been having trouble in my yard with territorial hummingbirds. I have a hardy fuchsia near the front door. Every time I go out the door, one hummingbird gets quite annoyed with me; there’s another one that seems to have claimed the fig tree. It’s actually surprisingly frightening to be buzzed by an angry hummingbird.)</p>
<p>Plenty of bees and mosquitoes – but never fireflies. No decline, though. I’ve never seen a firefly on the west coast.</p>
<p>Hmm, I saw many more fireflies than usual in NYC, back in June/early July! They were abundant in the park, and there was even spillover onto Broadway, up where I live. You could actually see the little lights flitting around people in the outdoor restaurants. Perhaps they all decided to move to the city! Don’t see them anymore though, they seem to have moved on.</p>
<p>We still have them in Northwestern Connecticut, although they have to wear sweaters on our cool summer evenings . . .</p>
<p>I’m from the philly area & have been thinking about this (absence) for years! Some of my friends in other areas of S. Jersey do have fireflies. I always accounted for the change by the fact that almost everyone in our neighborhood puts a chemical application on their lawn (w/the little flags announcing it) several times a year (no one did this where I grew up–a less upscale area where everyone mowed their own lawn). </p>
<p>No offense to anyone, but these are the same parents who won’t serve their kids anything but organic milk because of the ‘chemicals’ in regular milk.</p>
<p>Plenty of fireflies this summer in my Pittsburgh suburb. Jolynne, everyone in my neighborhood mows their own lawns and very few have services to fertilize (and they are all brown now because we don’t water either - it has rained once in the last 3 weeks).</p>
<p>Very few this year and they didn’t come until about a month later than usual, although they did stay longer, too.</p>
<p>We see no fireflies, and I always put it off to the mosquito spraying, you get out of town and you start to see them.
Because of West Nile, the spraying has become so heavy that we see few insects of any kind around our porch lights at night - now that’s scary.</p>
<p>I also live outside of Philly. I did see some fireflies starting in July, (Don’t they usually start to appear in June, around here?) but I also had noticed that there didn’t seem to be quite as many as in previous years.</p>
<p>I live in Philly, and I definitely saw fireflies back in June and July when I expect to see them. Maybe not as plentiful as they once were, but not rare, either. (For whatever reason, I really don’t expect to see them in late August.)</p>
<p>But my area (right by the park) has plenty of dead leaves, so maybe that explains it.</p>
<p>I’ve never seen any fireflies in my life. I used to think they were fantasy things, like snow (before I moved in the US).</p>
<p>plenty of fireflies (or lightening bugs, as we called them when I was growing up in the midwest) here in my Philadelphia near suburb – noticed them last night, as a matter of fact.</p>