Author: Holly Strand

Holly is a Communications Specialist for the State of Utah’s Division of Emergency Management. A geographer by training, Holly received her master’s degree from the University of Colorado. She worked 10 years for World Wildlife Fund, helping collect expert knowledge to map and describe conservation priorities in biodiverse regions around the world. Before that, she led specialty tours to northern and eastern Eurasia. Over twenty years of professional work in great places with unique habitats and endemic species has given Holly an appreciation of what’s special within the Utah landscape.
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Firefly light

Click for a larger view of a firefly, Courtesy Wikimedia, Bruce Marlin, Photographer, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license
Firefly
Courtesy Wikimedia,
Bruce Marlin, Photographer
Licensed under
Creative Commons Attribution-
Share Alike 2.5 Generic license

Click for a larger view of Nibley Firefly viewing spot Courtesy and copyright Google EarthFirefly viewing spot
Heritage Park, Nibley, UT
2456 S 800 W

Access 800 W from either 2600 S
(from Hwys 165 or 89)
OR 2200 S (Hwy 89 only)
41° 41′ 23″ N 111° 51′ 17″ W

Courtesy Google Earth, Imagery Date 8/11/2011

Hi, I’m Holly Strand.

One of my greatest delights during childhood was to visit my grandmother in North Carolina. For around her farmhouse I could spend endless hours chasing and catching fireflies–we called them lightening bugs back then. As an adult, I am still captivated by the dancing lights that animate the muggy darkness, often with a background chorus of crickets and cicadas.

Flashing in fireflies evolved as a way to identify a mate. The male flashes his invitation while patrolling the local air space. If a female is impressed, she responds, either from the ground or at some perch in a shrub or on tall grass. Different species emit different flash patterns to avoid interspecific mix-ups.

Fireflies are very common in the moister, eastern half of the US. Look for them near ponds, streams, wet meadows and marshes. Many popular science sources will assert that fireflies don’t occur in the arid west. Or they will say that fireflies in the west don’t flash. For while the larvae of all firefly species glow, the adult forms of some species don’t flash. And those non-flashing forms are the species which are documented online and in collections for Utah and surrounding states.

Until recently I felt sorry that Utah kids don’t get to experience these magical bioluminescent displays. But on Monday night just before 10 PM, my family and I stood at the end of the sidewalk behind the soccer fields in Nibley’s Heritage Park. As the sky darkened, tiny amber lights began to wink on and off. An entire field of twinkling lights lay before us. I had to pinch myself to make sure I wasn’t dreaming.

I asked around and discovered that –in the last 10 years or so–there have been several sightings of flashing fireflies here in Utah. In 2002, biologist Jim Cane discovered some in River Heights. Utah State University’s Insect Collection features a 2007 specimen from Heber Valley. In recent years, additional sightings have been reported in Escalante, the Uinta, Spanish Fork and now Nibley.

We don’t know why Utahns are now able to enjoy these insect light displays. Have the flashing fireflies always been here and we just didn’t notice them? Did we notice them, but didn’t document it publicly? Or is the range of this particular species expanding? And if so, why?

To see the Nibley fireflies check our website www.wildaboututah.org. We’ve posted a map. And if you have seen flashing fireflies now or in the recent past here in Utah, let us know and we’ll post it on our website for others who might be nearby.

In general, firefly populations are declining around the world, and they are obviously still rare here. So if you run across them, treat them with respect!

Thanks to Utah State University entomologists Charles Hawkins, Ted Evans and Jim Cane for sharing their firefly expertise.

For Wild About Utah, I’m Holly Strand.

Credits:

Image: Courtesy Wikimedia, Bruce Marlin, Photographer
Map/Satellite Image: Courtesy Google Earth
Theme music: Composed by Don Anderson and performed by Leaping Lulu, https://leapinglulu.com/
Text: Holly Strand

Reported Sightings:

22 June 2013
I just read the article about fireflies and want to say I’ve seen them in Mill Creek Canyon, just out of Moab (not Mill Canyon, which is north of town). I’m familiar with them from being in Missouri as a kid on vacation to see relatives.

Thanks for a great website! CM

24 June 2017
Today while waiting for local city fire works we saw a lighting bug or two. We are in West Haven.

Report your sighting

Sources & Additional Reading

Buschman, Lawrent L., Biology of the Firefly Pyractomena lucifera (Coleoptera: Lampyridae). The Florida Entomologist. 1984. Vol. 67(4):529. DOI: 10.2307/3494462 https://www.jstor.org/stable/3494462?origin=crossref&seq=5

Lloyd, James E., 1964. Notes on Flash Communication in the Firefly Pyractomena dispersa (Coleoptera: Lampyridae) Annals of the Entomological Society of America, Volume 57, Number 2, March 1964 , pp. 260-261. (James Lloyd is a leading authority on fireflies. He retired from academic duty at the University of FL, but here is a web page with some of his wisdom and musings. https://entnemdept.ufl.edu/lloyd/firefly/

(Boston) Museum of Science Firefly Watch
Volunteers help citizen scientists track firefly occurrences.
https://legacy.mos.org/fireflywatch/
https://www.massaudubon.org/programs-events/community-science/firefly-watch/view-explore-data

National Geographic. Firefly (Lightning Bug) Lampyridae
https://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/bugs/firefly/

Phys.org news service. Jun 26, 2012. Romancing the firefly: New insights into what goes on when the lights go off. https://phys.org/news/2012-06-romancing-firefly-insights.html#inlRlv

Stanger-Hall, Kathrin F., James E. Lloyd, David M. Hillis. 2007. Phylogeny of North American fireflies (Coleoptera: Lampyridae): Implications for the evolution of light signals. In Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 45 (2007) 33-49. http://www.bio-nica.info/biblioteca/stangerhall2007fireflies.pdf

Utah State University Insect Collection has over 117 cabinets housing approximately two million pinned insects and 35,000 microscope slides. Location: Room 240, Biology and Natural Resources Bldg.; Telephone: 435-797-0358
https://www.usu.edu/biology/research/insect-holdings/

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Yesterday’s Camels

Yesterday’s camel
Courtesy Wikimedia,
Arthur Weasley, Artist
Licensed under
GNU Free Documentation License

Utah locations where
ancient camel bones
were discovered.
Courtesy BerkeleyMapper,
created by
Berkeley Natural History Museums,
UC Berkeley at https://berkeleymapper.berkeley.edu/_

Map data ©2013Google,
INEGI Imagery, © 2013 Terra Metrics

Hyrum Museum
Courtesy Holly Strand, Photographer

Hi, I’m Holly Strand.

There’s a small, but very engaging museum underneath the public library in Hyrum UT. This museum showcases a number of artifacts reflecting the history, customs and environment of Cache Valley. When I first visited in 2009, a couple of odd items caught my eye. One was an enormous hairball that had formed in the stomach of a Cache Valley cow. Such hairballs are called bezoars, a Persian word meaning “antidote.” Centuries ago, bezoars were believed to be a universal antidote that could neutralize any poison.

The other odd item at the museum was a camel tooth. Now a cow hairball can seem geographically appropriate as Cache Valley has plenty of cows. But why would a camel tooth be in a museum about the history of Northern Utah?

Well it turns out that this particular tooth belonged to a native Utah camel species. It most likely came from we now call Yesterday’s camel (or Western camel) which lived over 10,000 years ago. This camel was twenty percent larger than a dromedary and had a longer, narrower head and thick muscled lips. Its footpad was soft and toes were splayed, approaching the foot structure of modern camels. We don’t really know whether or not Yesterday’s camel had a hump. Remains of this Pleistocene ancestor have been found throughout the American West and in a number of UT locations.

Further, I was surprised to learn that camels are a purely North American invention, first appearing some 40- 50 million years ago. At the peak of their North American career–during the Miocene–there were 13 genera of camels. Overall, at least 95 species in 36 genera have been described for this continent alone.

The earliest camel was no more than 2 feet high. After that we find camel legs and necks grew longer to allow browsing on trees and shrub tops. One particular species (Aepycamelus giraffinus ) stood 19 feet high. Essentially this camel had become America’s giraffe on what was then a Serengeti-like plain.

Other camels resembled gazelles, and still others looked more like the camelids of today.

4 million years ago, camelids first crossed the land bridge to Eurasia . Living in Eurasian deserts, they evolved into arid land specialists with a remarkable physiological capacity for water conservation.

Other North American camelids drifted south to colonize South America. They evolved into today’s llamas, guanacos, alpacas, and vicunas—all high altitude grazing specialists.

After a few waves of migration, camels suddenly vanished from their birthplace. In fact much of the North America’s megafauna suddenly vanished in the late Pleistocene. Perhaps due to human hunting, perhaps climate change. We may never know for sure.

But one thing is clear to me now–a camel tooth definitely has a place in a Utah history museum.

For more information and sources, and a link to the Hyrum Museum, go to www.wildaboututah.org

For Wild About Utah, I’m Holly Strand.

Credits:

Image: Courtesy Wikimedia, Arthur Weasley, Photographer
          Courtesy & Copyright © Holly Strand, Photographer
          Courtesy BerkeleyMapper, created by Berkeley Natural History Museums,
          UC Berkeley at https://berkeleymapper.berkeley.edu/_
          Map data ©2013Google,
          INEGI Imagery, © 2013 Terra Metrics
Text: Holly Strand

Sources & Additional Reading

Flannery, Tim. 2001. The Eternal Frontier: An Ecological History of North America and its Peoples, NY: Grove Press.
https://www.amazon.com/Eternal-Frontier-Ecological-History-byFlannery/dp/B004XOXF06

Honey, J. J. Harrison, D. Prothero, M. Stevens, 1998. Camelidae. In:
C. Janis, K. Scott, L Jacobs, (eds.), Evolution of Tertiary Mammals of North America, Vol. 1. Terrestrial carnivores, ungulates and ungulate-like mammals, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UKIrwin, Robert. 2010. Camel. London : Reaktion Books
https://www.amazon.com/Evolution-Tertiary-Mammals-North-America/dp/0521619688

San Diego Zoo Global. 2009. Extinct Western Camel, Camelops hesternus
https://library.sandiegozoo.org/factsheets/_extinct/camel_extinct_western/extinctcamel.htm [Accessed at time of publication – Note from Library.SanDiegoZoo.org 11/24/2024: The SDZWA Staff Publications Repository and Zoonooz/Journal Index are both unavailable as we work with a new vendor to provide users a better searching experience. Please contact the Library team, or check back here soon, for more information.]

Hyrum Museum
50 West Main Street
Hyrum, UT 84319
435-245-0208
https://hyrumcitymuseum.org/

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May Swenson: Observer of nature and Utah poet

May Swenson: Observer of nature and Utah poet: Click for larger picture, May Swenson, 1965 in Tucson Copyright L.H. Clark, Courtesy Utah State University Press
May Swenson, 1965 in Tucson
Copyright © L.H. Clark
Courtesy Utah State University Press

Hi, I’m Holly Strand from Stokes Nature Center in beautiful Logan Canyon.

In Logan Cemetery a granite bench marks the grave of May Swenson, a native Utahn and eminent poet. She was born in Logan in 1913 and attended Utah State University where she published her first poem. She moved east in 1936, and eventually, she became one of America’s most inventive and recognized poets, She won many awards including Guggenheim and Rockefeller grants, the Yale Bollingen Prize, and the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. Utah State University conferred an honorary doctorate on Swenson in 1987. Despite her many achievements and her years living away from Utah, Swenson never forgot her Mormon heritage or her identity as a Westerner.

Nature played a prominent role in Swenson’s work. In fact, she published a collection of poetry called Nature: Poems Old and New which is brimming with imagery that evokes the beauty and complexity of the natural world.

Here’s an example: a poem called April Light read by Paul Crumbley, a professor of English at Utah State University who specializes in Swenson’s work.

April light
Lined with light
the twigs are stubby arrows.
A gilded trunk writhes
Upward from the roots,
from the pit of the black tentacles.
In the book of spring
a bare-limbed torso
is the first illustration.
Light teaches the tree
to beget leaves,
to embroider itself all over
with green reality,
until summer becomes
its steady portrait
and birds bring their lifetime
to the boughs.
Then even the corpse
light copies from below
may shimmer, dreaming it feels
the cheeks of blossom.

Another of Swenson’s poems describes a well-known natural feature in Utah.

Listen to this excerpt of Above Bear Lake:

A breeze, and the filtered light makes shine
A million bristling quills of spruce and fir
Downslope, where slashes of sky and lake
Hang blue—windows of intense stain. We take
The rim trail, crushing bloom of sage,
Sniffing resinous wind, our boots in the wild,
Small, everycolored Rocky Mountain flowers.
Suddenly, a steep drop-off: below we see the whole,
the whale of it—deep, enormous blue—
that widens, while the sky slants back to pale
behind a watercolored mountain.

Listening to this makes me feel like I’m standing on the scenic outlook at the summit of Logan Canyon. That is, of course, where Swenson wrote it.

For more on the Utah poet May Swenson, see our website www.wildaboututah.org
Thanks to Paul Crumbley and Maria Melendez of the English Dept. at Utah State University.
And thanks to the Rocky Mountain Power Foundation for supporting the research and development for today’s program.

For Wild About Utah and Stokes Nature Center, I’m Holly Strand.

Credits:

Readings: Paul Crumbley and Maria Melendez of the English Dept, Utah State University

Text& Voice: Holly Strand, Stokes Nature Center

Learn More:

Holly’s pieces on Wild About Utah

Knudson, R.R. and Suzzanne Bigelow. 1996. May Swenson: A Poet’s Life in Photos. Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, https://www.jstor.org/stable/43021931

Swenson, May, Nature: Poems Old and New, Mariner Books (fmr: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), April 19, 2000, https://www.amazon.com/Nature-Poems-Old-May-Swenson/dp/0618064087

The life of Utah poet May Swenson, with Margaret Brucia, Access Utah with Tom Williams, https://www.upr.org/show/access-utah/2025-07-14/the-life-of-utah-poet-may-swenson-on-access-utah

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2013 Desert Wildflower Forecast

Click for a larger view of a Dark-eyed 'Oregon' Junco Male, Junco hyemalis montanus, Courtesy and copyright 2008 Ryan P. O'Donnell
Claret cup cactus in bloom
Arches National Park
Echinocereus triglochidiatus
var. melancanthus
Courtesy NPS, Neal Herbert, Photographer

Hi, I’m Holly Strand.

It’s showtime for desert wildflowers in CA, AZ and NM. But in Utah’s deserts think April or May. Within those months the exact timing, type and quantity of blooms are highly variable. Flowering depends upon the pattern of precipitation from fall onward and on spring temperatures, sunlight and elevation. And of course, on the specific ecological requirements of each particular plant.

Annuals are plentiful in the desert. Annual plants germinate, grow, flower, set seed and die all within one season—often in the spring. To avoid water stress—some annuals will start their life cycle only when there is significant moisture. If it’s dry, they may stay in seed form waiting for better conditions. Likewise, many perennials—plants that live more than 2 years—can remain below ground as dormant bulbs, corms or roots. But when conditions are right, these water stress avoiders –both annuals and perennials–will flourish. When this happens we call it a “good year” for wildflowers.

I couldn’t find a wildflower hotline for Utah—so I called different parks representing Utah’s 3 different desert regions to get a flower forecast for 2013.

Nothing much is happening yet on the Colorado Plateau in and around Arches and Canyonlands National Parks. It’s been pretty cold according to staff ranger Sharon Brussell. So the appearance of spring flowers is somewhat delayed. But in April we can expect to see evening primrose, twinpods and milk vetches. And in late April-early May, Princes’ plume, globemallow and yucca. The scarlet blooms of claret cup cactus will follow. If you miss what you are looking for in Arches or the Needles district, just go higher to Islands in the Sky, adds Nathaniel Clark of the Canyonlands National Park. Here–because of the elevation–flowering of similar species occurs 2-4 weeks later.

Snow Canyon is in the Mojave Desert region. Park Manager Kristen Comella told me that this is likely to be a typical year for wildflowers. Spectacled pod and lotus vetch are already out. Soon we’ll see bright yellow flowers of the Mojave’s signature creosote bush, and the deep purple flowers of indigo bush. Prickly pear and Utah yucca will soon follow. If you want to see early spring blooms on Joshua trees, go south on old highway 91 from Gunlock to see Utah’s one and only Joshua Tree forest.

To find out what’s happening in the Great Basin I spoke with Ben Roberts at Nevada’s Great Basin National Park. He says there has been a bit less precipitation than normal but it should still be an OK year for flowers. So far he’s only spotted one — Nevada lomatium. This brave little plant blooms even when there is snow still lying around. From a distance you might even think the low-lying white flowers are a patch of snow. In April desert paintbrush will appear, as will arrow-leaf balsamroot and purple sage. Wild iris, blue flax and prickly pear will follow in May.

For sources and pictures and suggestions for good desert wildflower hikes go to www.wildaboututah.org

For Wild About Utah, I’m Holly Strand.

Credits:
Image: Courtesy NPS, Arches National Park, Neal Herbert, Photographer
Text: Holly Strand

Recommended hikes for viewing wildflowers

Great Basin National Park (Great Basin)
Baker Creek Trail
Lehman Creek Trail
Pole Canyon Trail

Arches National Park (Colorado Plateau)
Primitive Loop

Canyonlands National Park (Colorado Plateau)
Neck Spring Trail—Islands in the Sky

Snow Canyon State Park (Mojave Desert)
Hidden Canyon
Whiptail Trails

Sources & Additional Reading

Arches Flower Guide (by color, month, name and keys)https://www.nps.gov/arch/naturescience/flowerguide.htm 

Comstock, J. and J. Ehrlinger 1992. Plant adaptations in the Great Basin and Colorado Plateau. Great Basin Naturalist. Vol. 52. No. 3

Fertig, Walter. 2010. Utah’s Mojave Desert Flora. Sego Lily, newsletter of the Utah Native Plant Society. Vol. 33, No. 2. https://www.unps.org/segolily/Sego2010MarApr.pdf

McMahon, James. 1985. Deserts (National Audubon Society Nature Guides) NY: Alfred A. Knopf https://www.amazon.com/Deserts-National-Audubon-Society-Nature/dp/0394731395

Williams, David. 2000. A Naturalist’s Guide to Canyon Country. A Falcon Guide. Helena MT. Published in cooperation with Canyonlands Natural History Association.https://www.amazon.com/Naturalists-Guide-Canyon-Country-Williams/dp/1560447834