northeast-flora-and-fauna

Yesterday I talked about the Dogbane Leaf Beetle as one of my favorite beetles, but there are other contenders. Here's a firefly, probably in the Photinus genus . And in my area, the most common of these is the Common Eastern Firefly . And yes, despite their common names of "firefly" and "lightning bug", these insects are neither flies nor true bugs but are a type of beetle. Identifying these guys in daylight (at least down to the species) is difficult. My book Fireflies, Glow-worms, and Lightning Bugs (by Lynn Frierson Faust) relies a lot on seeing their flash pattern and color. If this is a Common Eastern Firefly, at night I should see a flash that lasts long enough to look like a Nike swoosh or the letter J, and this should repeat every 6 seconds with a mostly yellow color. Other species may have different colors (green or orange aren't unusual) and a different flash pattern. But seeing one in daylight makes the ID less reliable. My book states "Fra...