Welcome to my website. My name is David Albaugh and I have had a lifelong interest in entomology. This started at the age of seven thanks to a kit for collecting butterflies and moths. This kit was put out by the now defunct Butterfly Company, the world’s leading supplier of dried insects at the time from Far Rockaway, NY. It was this very company, and it’s owner Irene Glanz, that fueled my desire to know everything I could about the world of insects.

As a child and into my teen years, I was unaware of the importance of conservation and butterfly and habitat preservation. I still collect insects but now it is in photographic form, and not by actually keeping dead specimens in a wooden shadowbox. I first noticed a decline in local populations in 1981 when Rhode Island had an unprecedented outbreak of gypsy moths. Thanks to excessive spraying, not only were butterfly populations greatly affected but so were the giant Saturniid moth populations. It was here when I took a few years off from insects to re-evaluate.

After pursuing other interests throughout most of high school I realized that my interest in insects was still there but the thought of pinning dead specimens in museum drawers did not appeal to me. I was still noticing that local butterfly and moth populations were less than when I was a kid so I decided to do something about it. I started to transform the yard at my parents’ house into a huge butterfly garden, not only filling it with butterfly-attracting flowers but also planting plenty of the local species’ favorite plants to lay their eggs on. This planting showed almost immediate results, which made me even more enthusiastic about doing more.

The next thing I started to do was collect the butterfly eggs and raise them in containers on my mom’s kitchen table. She was such a sport (and still is to this day). Everything that I raised when then released back into the wild. Then I started also raising Saturniid moths as well, releasing sometimes hundreds of adults back into the wild. As each year passed, more plants were added to the yard and I was drawing in more and more individuals. I was also starting to see butterflies I had not seen in the past. Obviously, what I was doing was working.