Glow Worms, July 2026

23 July 2026

It was a perfect evening for our annual glow worm hunt, warm and still. All we needed to do was to stay awake until it got dark.

The trouble with glow worms is that they don’t glow until it gets dark, and at this time of year it gets dark very late. For that reason, the Club’s glow worm walks tend to start while it’s still light, and we go for a walk while we wait for darkness to fall. This year nine of us met at Stonesfield common, and we enjoyed a pleasant walk over the common, identifying flowers and spotting roosting butterflies.

By the time we reached the village, it was pretty much dark, but it still took quite a bit of hunting to find our first glowing female glow worms. I had wondered last year what effect the unusually hot, dry weather would have on that year’s larvae, which would hatch out the following year as adults. This year’s summer was also hot and dry, after a wet winter, and that might have had something to do with the low total that we found. On my recce earlier in the week, I had also found just 5 glowing females, including one that I had to rescue from the middle of the road.

Two of this summer’s females were glowing on top of grassy graves, and the other three were in long grass.

On a supplementary trip to Swinbrook churchyard the following week, which has been a good site in the past, I saw no glowing females. The grass had recently been cut, both in the churchyard and the adjoining lane, which might explain it.

Sue Morton