That's a long exposure, but there really can be that many of them. I was out on a moonless night in upstate New York. An amazing number of stars was visible (I could even see the Milky Way), I was surrounded by fireflies and glowworms, and there were no other sources of light once I turned my flashlight off. It was so dark that I couldn't see my own feet, just lights in all directions.
this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2025
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I used to live out in the country near a nature preserve and can confirm it looks like this.
Now I’m forced to live in the burbs and get excited when I see a single firefly.
There used to be at least some fireflies every year where I lived in Brooklyn when I was a kid but now there aren't.
stop mowing your lawn and stop raking leaves, and the fireflies ought to come back
I didn’t rake my leaves and now have two, but my neighbors all mow their lawns and get rid of leaves
I have amazing memories as a kid seeing fields that looked like this! I miss it.
Me too. :)
We have this many right now in the swamps.
Pretty sure that line is a reference to this. One of my fave songs :)
It is definitely a reference and I don’t know why you got downvoted for that lol.
Someone might have thought it was so obvious that it didn't need stating and would just ruin the joke. Alternatively, someone who was somehow unaware of the song and assumed that would be the case for nearly everyone else might have overconfidently decided it was a stretch without looking at the first line of the song.
Someone just jelly of my amazing taste in nearly-20-year-old music, probably 😊
I don’t think that a single downvote is worth paying attention to.
I don't know why this song makes me cry every time I hear it. Something about it gets me right in the soul. Also I didn't know the artist or song name so thanks for the link, that is a beautiful video; I haven't seen it before and after a bit of an emotionally taxing day I got a happy cry and I feel a lot lighter inside
💚 Thank you for brightening this stranger's day
Aww I’m super glad to hear it improved your day, and you’ll be able to find it again in the future!
I get the same reaction to it, I think it’s the use of flat melancholic notes scattered throughout, such as in the refrain “I’d like to make myself believe, that planet earth turns slowly”. For me anyway. I love that sort of upbeat but sorrowful sort of thing. It gives me intense frisson (aka aesthetic shiver, aka that chill down your spine when something hits just right).
The sound of silence covered by Pentatonix also gives me mad frisson every time I hear it. And for the same reason I think.
I moved away from a state that has them. They’re so beautiful to watch over a big open field. Like stars that fill the ground to complete the sky.
I got a million hugs from 10,000 lightning bugs!
I’ve always wondered if the hugs were distributed evenly or if there was a hugs georg firefly and the rest were normal ones
I only got 30k :(
Sat with a couple friends, heavily under the influence of mushrooms, and watched fireflies across a newly planted tree farm field.
I’m pretty sure the three of us each took our own universal truth from that night but in that moment I was pretty sure I witnessed the fireflies riding some sort of universal wave, like gravity and they would jump from wave to wave when they blinked.
Anyways. I miss being young.
Or shrooms. Maybe I just miss those…
Shrooms are great, even before the studies came out saying they could treat depression etc for years after taking I knew.
One good day on shrooms and 6 months of better life after
Ha I had a similar experience, mushrooms are great.
During COVID when nobody able to spray for mosquitoes there was a really cool resurgence - even in the suburbs. Came home from a bicycle ride late one evening, and swear every tree had Christmas lights strung up, they were chilling out and just glimmering in every branch.
I pushed the bike home that night and watched the show in the trees, a lovely coda to the day
My house is like this but with mosquitoes instead of fires
First time I prefer mosquitoes because the alternative is my home burning down
That's how forests fires get started. That and DEI.
Don’t forget the (((space lasers)))
I have a lot in my backyard, it's a treat to see at night. I have been searching online on what plants they like so I could build a firefly refuge and encourage their breeding but I can't find any info.
I remember when Florida had them in large number, not like that but still maybe one every 10 feet or so on the heaviest night I've seen. It was pretty. Now I get excited if I see any at all. If I see 3 in the same night I am ecstatic.
Where is the moth poster when we need him
I can smell this picture.
Do the bugs have a scent? I've never lived in an area with them.
When we were kids we'd catch them in jars sometimes and if you smelled the jar after it def had a scent. If the population is dense enough you can just smell it in the air.
None that I’ve noticed
I took my friends to go see trees full of fireflies while camping and doing mushrooms, mind blowing.
I had an experience like this camping out in the foothills of the Catskills. One of my favorite camping trips.
Never seen fire flies in real life I've always had to make do with embers from a fire
Same here until I moved to Ohio for a few years, they're really cool to have around.
there were so many fireflies in nyc yesterday, i was shocked!