It is the height of firefly season, said Chen Tsan-jong (陳燦榮), a firefly chaser for more than fifteen years, describing this time of year as "explosive" in terms of the number of fireflies.
According to Chen's observations, there are double or triple the number of fireflies nationwide compared with previous seasons, with even greater growth in some areas.
He has written three books on the subject of fireflies and regularly makes records of their activity in Yilan, Hualien, Tainan, Hsinchu and Taipei among other places.
This year, he said, he found hundreds of fireflies in locales where he had only recorded ten or twenty in his records from previous years.
Ho Chien-jong (何健鎔), the secretary of the Firefly Preservation Society also reported a rise in numbers this year, despite the difficulties of ascertaining accurate numbers.
The warm winter followed by plentiful spring showers might have caused the firefly population explosion, Chen said.
Mild, moist conditions cause a higher number of snails because of the increased amount of rotting vegetation for them to feed on. Fireflies in turn feed on snails.
However, Wu Chia-hsiung (吳加雄), a graduate student at National Taiwan University's Institute of Entomology, explained that all insects are affected by temperature and develop fastest when it is between 20oC and 30oC. Growth decelerates if the temperature either goes above or below that range. Whether this year's bountiful firefly season is connected to a warm winter requires further verification, Wu said.
What does seem clear, Wu said, is that the warm winter has brought an early firefly season. Black-winged fireflies ordinarily appear at the end of March, but this year they were spotted in Chiayi in the middle of February.
There are more than 50 varieties of fireflies in Taiwan, meaning that even though April and May are the best months for spotting fireflies, they are visible in some localities as late as August and September, and even in the depth of winter.
Older Taiwanese hold fond memories of the "golden-fire ladies," Chen said, but with the overdevelopment of their environment and the ubiquity of modern lighting, firefly spotting has become much harder.
To encourage a firefly revival, schools, communities and farms have worked to reduce pesticide usage and light pollution.
Firefly spotting has also become big business, as a type of ecological tourism.
Chen said that the earliest destination to offer firefly spotting was Tungshih Forest Park back in 1990.
In recent years, other locations have also offered "firefly seasons," attracting up to ten thousand visitors in some popular spots in a single night. However, he added, it is not necessary to spend a lot of money to see fireflies -- even residents of Taipei can find fireflies in secluded areas near the capital city.
Yeh Ruoh-lan (葉若蘭) is the proprieter of Ruoh-lan Villa in Chiayi where tens of thousands of fireflies can be seen on April evenings. The villa was fully booked for this month by January this year. Some visitors come every year to see the fireflies, she said, others are moved to tears by the sight.
Taiwan yesterday condemned the recent increase in Chinese coast guard-escorted fishing vessels operating illegally in waters around the Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島) in the South China Sea. Unusually large groupings of Chinese fishing vessels began to appear around the islands on Feb. 15, when at least six motherships and 29 smaller boats were sighted, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said in a news release. While CGA vessels were dispatched to expel the Chinese boats, Chinese coast guard ships trespassed into Taiwan’s restricted waters and unsuccessfully attempted to interfere, the CGA said. Due to the provocation, the CGA initiated an operation to increase
A crowd of over 200 people gathered outside the Taipei District Court as two sisters indicted for abusing a 1-year-old boy to death attended a preliminary hearing in the case yesterday afternoon. The crowd held up signs and chanted slogans calling for aggravated penalties in child abuse cases and asking for no bail and “capital punishment.” They also held white flowers in memory of the boy, nicknamed Kai Kai (剴剴), who was allegedly tortured to death by the sisters in December 2023. The boy died four months after being placed in full-time foster care with the
A Taiwanese woman on Sunday was injured by a small piece of masonry that fell from the dome of St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican during a visit to the church. The tourist, identified as Hsu Yun-chen (許芸禎), was struck on the forehead while she and her tour group were near Michelangelo’s sculpture Pieta. Hsu was rushed to a hospital, the group’s guide to the church, Fu Jing, said yesterday. Hsu was found not to have serious injuries and was able to continue her tour as scheduled, Fu added. Mathew Lee (李世明), Taiwan’s recently retired ambassador to the Holy See, said he met
The Shanlan Express (山嵐號), or “Mountain Mist Express,” is scheduled to launch on April 19 as part of the centennial celebration of the inauguration of the Taitung Line. The tourism express train was renovated from the Taiwan Railway Corp’s EMU500 commuter trains. It has four carriages and a seating capacity of 60 passengers. Lion Travel is arranging railway tours for the express service. Several news outlets were invited to experience the pilot tour on the new express train service, which is to operate between Hualien Railway Station and Chihshang (池上) Railway Station in Taitung County. It would also be the first tourism service
RSS