Fear the dark less, love the night more. One way is to gaze at the stars and simultaneously absorb the synchronous display of fireflies (jugnoos) wafting around you. About 2,200 species of fireflies have been scientifically assessed across the Earth. These drifting embers across time and space have been described by Cate Hibbitt as an “accessible biological magic: jewels of light glinting in summer evenings throughout the world”.
Bengali literature gave us a poetic image: “A boat on a dark night finding its way by the firefly’s glow”. A lonely Englishman, HA Severn, offered Western biological sciences the first description of Indian fireflies. Writing from Wayanad (Kerala) in the June 23, 1881, issue of Nature, Severn described his house as perched in the Nadgani valley. As darkness stole upon twilight, Severn saw fireflies “here, there and everywhere....Their numbers rapidly increase much indeed as the visibility of stars increases as the evening passes into midnight”.
How much light the fireflies emitted was quaintly described by Severn: “One (captured) insect enables me to see the time by a white-faced watch when four inches distant; 12 placed in a glass jar enabled me to read a book with ease. The light is of an exceedingly beautiful colour, a sombre yellow tinged with green.”
He was struck by the fact that the fireflies did not make a buzzing sound when drifting and flashing. By liberating some in his bedroom in the dark, Severn noted that they “only appeared as fairy stars, as no humming could be detected.” Astounded by their ability to act in concert while resting on trees, Severn counted that fireflies would follow an unremitting pattern: five-second pause of no light followed by seven flashes.
{{/usCountry}}He was struck by the fact that the fireflies did not make a buzzing sound when drifting and flashing. By liberating some in his bedroom in the dark, Severn noted that they “only appeared as fairy stars, as no humming could be detected.” Astounded by their ability to act in concert while resting on trees, Severn counted that fireflies would follow an unremitting pattern: five-second pause of no light followed by seven flashes.
{{/usCountry}}Birds & fireflies
Severn wrote about the Baya weaver bird protecting its nest at night by sticking blobs of clay within the nest and then affixing fireflies to it, like bungalow night lamps. Contemporary Indian firefly researchers add that sticking fireflies also helped the female weaver bird to tend to and rear her chicks at night. “The Indian Jungle Nightjar launched aerial sallies to catch fireflies (and) take them to nest site crevices in rocky edges or hill slopes. Female nightjars lay eggs on bare stones in a well-hidden niche near or on rocks or along stony slopes. The dark nest site gets lit by (captured) firefly lighting, enabling the mother nightjar to incubate eggs, rear the nestlings, and clean the nest,” wrote researchers AK Chakravarthy, Md. Parvez, Ashutosh Dey and Amlan Das.
Out of Africa
Danish author Karen Blixen described fireflies of the Kenyan highlands in her 1937 book, ‘Out of Africa’, whose 1985 Hollywood adaption bagged seven Oscars. “On an evening, you will see two or three of them, adventurous, lonely stars floating in the clear air, rising and falling, as if upon waves, or as if curtseying. You may catch the insect and make it shine upon the palm of your hand, giving out a strange light, a mysterious message; it turns the flesh pale green in a small circle around it.” When firefly numbers increased, Blixen wrote it was “impossible not to imagine a crowd of children running through the dark forest carrying candles, little sticks dipped in a magical fire, joyously jumping up and down, and gambolling as they run, and swinging their small pale torches merrily.”
True love
Michelle from Wisconsin (US) shared the story of her parents: “One night, when my Mom and Dad were still teenagers, they were out walking and my Dad caught a lightning bug. He used its lantern to trace a glowing line around my mother’s ring finger. Then he vowed: ‘Here’s the first of many rings to prove how much I love you’. To celebrate their 60th anniversary, we filled the hall with jars of firefly lights.”
A retired science teacher from St. Louis, Missouri, wrote of die-hard love: “My mother was young, she slipped out one evening with her Mason jar to collect fireflies. As she ran through the grass, she tripped and fell on a rock, and the jar shattered. A glass shard sliced her finger. Even though she eventually lost that finger, she never did lose the love she had for these silent sparks.”
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