Special Mission – Year Two

Last year we undertook a “Special Mission” to count glow worms on a route of  500 metres in length near our house.  I posted about the Special Mission in July last year.  We were contacted again this year and were on the road at 11.00 p.m. last Saturday.

glow worm

I was a bit disappointed with the photographs I took but it was important to try, as seemingly they are often able to tell which species they are, even from fuzzy photographs.  We saw eight females but no males and no couples mating.  Last year we had found fourteen on our second attempt and we were able to photograph a couple mating.  This year has been very dry so perhaps less snails for the larval food?

Sous apricotier

The previous day Kourosh had noticed a glow worm under the apricot tree in the back garden when he had been pulling back the weeds.  So we checked if it was still there.

Glow worm with snails

She was still there on Saturday night and we also noticed a lot of little snails ( of the Clausilies family, I think).

Un autre dans le jardin clignotant

This one was in the front garden and she was producing a strong light but still no male.

I posted this just to give everybody a poke if they had intended to notify http://www.asterella.eu/index.php? in France (or indeed to notify the various organisation with similar projects in other countries) and might have forgotten to check their garden.

We do not often go wandering around after midnight but with the street light extinguished it is beautiful to watch the stars in a cloudless summer sky.

Deilephila elpenor.Elephant Hawk Moth

When we got back to the house we found an Elephant Hawk-Moth (Deilephila elpenor) waiting for us on the kitchen window ledge so perhaps we should take after dark walks more frequently.

 

14 thoughts on “Special Mission – Year Two

  1. Janine

    Hi, We have not seen glow worms in our area. I think it is too cold. However we also had a visit from a very elegant Elephant Hawk Moth, which is an introduced species to BC and Canada.

    Like

  2. Glow worms are such amazing little critters. The colors on that moth are beautiful. I’d like to go out mothing this time of year but the mosquitoes are unbearable. 😦

    Like

  3. We never used to do night walks, but a couple of years ago, we discovered lightning bugs (fireflies, whatever.) Since then, we’ve made it a practice, in season. This year we were surprised by the return of bats–who’d been scarce for a while.

    Like

  4. Pingback: Accepting choices in the garden | a french garden

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s