Kathleen Groll Connolly, Landscape & Garden Designer, Speaker, Writer
When it comes to helping pollinators and wildlife, you don’t have to buy plants or dig a garden. Anyone can help when they adopt some of the ideas put forward by the International Dark-Sky Association (IDA). Better yet, we can all petition our cities and towns to do the same. You’ll be helping all wildlife, not just bees and butterflies. Learn more . . .
Fireflies, a.k.a. lightning bugs, were a big event at Fourth of July picnics during my western Pennsylvania childhood. Our pack of cousins and siblings ran and yelped through the swarms after dark. Fireflies don’t bite, sting, or make noise, so no one stopped us from chasing the tiny lights while adults picked up the day’s picnic and packed the family automobiles.
Fireflies were so numerous that they could brighten the night. Little did we know that the lights, a product of the insect’s “bioluminescence,” were key to their courting ritual. The aerial dance insured fireflies would flash again next year.
Many of us remember chasing fireflies on summer nights as children. Others wistfully recall listening to hoot-owls, or finding frogs, toads, turtles, newts, salamanders, and, yes, snakes. Learn 8 ways we can put out the wildlife welcome mat.
