It’s National Moth Week. Some people are really into it.

Good morning, DMV! It’s Wednesday, July 22.

After I wrote about fireflies yesterday, a reader wrote to tell me that this week is National Moth Week. Yes, this exists. According to the moth week website, it began in 2012 in New Jersey and is now an international citizen science initiative in more than 90 countries. The reader sent me a link to the iNaturalist website where observations are recorded — specifically the page for moth week 2026 in Maryland.

I clicked in and browsed. As of 1 a.m., the data collected in Maryland for moth week include about 1,300 observations submitted by 282 observers, of about 380 species.

The person who had submitted the most observations went by the username dreadhorn. Real name: Ashley Rodeheaver.

I rummaged around online and reached out via Facebook. A little over an hour later, she responded. I called her.

Each year since 2023, Ashley has launched the Maryland moth week project on iNaturalist. In the first two nights, she photographed and uploaded to iNaturalist 139 observations of 92 species.

A 39-year-old mother of two teenage girls, she lives in western Maryland in Mountain Lake Park — population 2,147 as of the 2020 census.

Her parents were scientists: her late stepdad a mammologist at Virginia Tech, and her mother a biology teacher. As a child, she helped them do research on small mammals — mice, shrews, voles. But her own interest, at first, was butterflies.

“When I got older [about age 10 or so], I realized there were so many more moths than butterflies, and I knew so little about them,” she told me on the call.

“In the old days, you didn’t have the internet. You had old Audubon and Peterson guides. My parents bought them for me. My stepdad was a collector of nature books as well and has passed on a lot of those to me. And I still collect them myself — anytime I go into a thrift store and find something ancient, I buy it and add it to my library.”

Every night during moth week, if it’s not raining, Ashley observes, using a Canon camera with a macro lens. Her backyard setup to lure the moths is a frame her husband made with metal piping, a white shower curtain and black lights.

“I wake myself up at 12 o’clock at night and see what’s there. I’ll take pictures for like an hour. Then I’ll sleep for a couple more hours and then do it again. Then I shut my lights off for the night, because you want to give the moths a chance to fly away so they’re not bird food in the morning.”

She said the habitat in her yard is oak trees and hemlock. She may also spend the night at her in-laws’ home, which has more pine and black cherry.

“Whenever you switch up the habitat, you get a whole new variety,” she said. “I’ll spend the night. They have a little extra house. I’ll sleep and go out every couple hours, like I do at home.”

Ashley is admin and creator of iNaturalist projects on the butterflies and moths of Garrett County, where Mountain Lake Park is located. She also raises moths.

In 2023, she said, “I found an imperial moth that was injured in the Walmart parking lot. I brought it home, put it in a box, and she laid 120-some eggs. It was the year my stepdad died, and it gave me something to focus on.”

She is currently raising 25 eggs of promethea silkmoth, which, like the polyphemus moth, is of the Saturniid family of some of the largest species of moths in the world.

“I just have a really soft spot for the great big Saturniid moths… They hatch out of these really tiny eggs. When I’ve raised them, it will be months of feeding them, these caterpillars that get as big as your hands. They’re just really beautiful,” she said.

“The way things are these days” with pesticide use and parasites, “we see a lot less insects. I really enjoy raising them and returning them back to nature.”

She knew so much about moths. I had so many questions. I wondered if she had a degree in entomology in college. She told me she never went to college. As soon as she graduated from high school, she said, she got married and started a family.

Her job is at Walmart, where she has worked for 14 years. She does online grocery pickup, fulfilling shopping orders for other people.

Are you participating in National Moth Week? Share your moth observations or simply photos of summer life in the DMV here.

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I don’t do this often, but today … a shameless plug for my husband, Landry Dunand, who is an amazing tintype photographer. He will have a week-long tintype portrait studio in downtown D.C. at Touchstone Gallery for its 50th anniversary celebration. The opening reception is tonight, 5 to 8 p.m.

Join us. If you see me, please say hello. Schedule a photoshoot with him here.

Also …

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