Glow worms

On the first day of the holiday my family sat down and made a list of things we would like to do over the summer. Some of the ideas were things such as catching up with people we haven’t seen for a while, or visiting particular places, but one of the ideas on the list was to trying a find a glow worm.

We thought we would have a better chance with somebody who knew what they were doing so we signed up on a guide walk by Robin Scagell who by pure chance was running an evening in Oxfordshire the very next day.

Arriving at the site just after 9pm the group walked along the track to the bottom of a hill where we were shown photos on an ipad of what we would be looking for. It was the female glow worm that we were in search of, she is a medium sized beetle that has no wings and gives out a green glow around the hours of 10pm to midnight, during June and July.

After listen to the talk on glow worms, the group of us spread out in search of a small green light on a very large hillside but by the end of the evening 3 glow worms had been spotted.

Glow worms are generally found on chalk grassland, similar to the one we were on, but also in gardens, woodland rides, heathland and railway embankments.

The female uses its glow to attract a mate who will fly low over the area looking for this green light. Once the female has mated, she stops glowing, lays eggs and then dies.