When I arrived at the marsh in the early morning hours, it looked like the spiders had been busy all night preparing decorations for Halloween—there were spider webs everywhere.
The webs seemed to have been more hastily constructed than those of the orbweavers that I have observed recently and there did not appear to be any spiders in the center of these webs. What is the purpose of these webs if the spiders are not there to secure any prey that is caught in the web?
I can’t help but admire the amazing artistry of these fascinating little creatures as I examine the interlocking lines and curves of their incredible creations.
I’ve place these images in a mosaic collage—if you want to see larger versions of the images, just click on any one of them and you’ll move into a slide show mode that lets you scroll through them quickly.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Mike Powell 
You seem to have been in “pearl necklace” heaven.
Indeed I was, Steve. I’ve been told that pearls go with anything and the spiders seem to have taken that to heart. As you might imagine, this is only a small subset of the photos that I shot that morning.
It occurred to me that we generally think of spiderwebs of this type as roughly symmetric, but gravity causes all the “necklaces,” whether above or below the center of the web, to hang in the same direction.
It’s good that you got to take many more photos than shown here.
All jewelled and shining in the light!
I do not care for spiders – but I do admire their work! It is like a piece of art – lovely captured!
I don’t see too many of these. I’ve got to get out earlier, I guess. They do make an interesting photo.
It’s kind of strange, Allen, because some days I see webs like this and some days I don’t. It seems like there are certain conditions that cause them to be more visible (like dew and specific angles of the light), but there’s a kind of randomness that makes it an unexpected joy when I stumble upon webs like this.
Fantastic spider web photos Mike. I really like seeing the big one, and that gap in the bottom left of the web. Looks like the spider must have caught something?
Thanks, Jet. I am not sure if the gap means the spider caught something, though that sure seems like a possibility.