Aug 282014
It was a hot and dusty afternoon; holding the camera in the late-day sunlight, I dripped with perspiration, the droplets falling onto the parched roadway. At last, I decided it was time to photograph the web of a Bowl-and-Doily Spider (Frontinella pyramitela) that I had been noticing every day for months now, about halfway down Piney Woods Church Road. In the waning sunlight, I also caught the spider’s silhouette close-up. This tiny spider, about a centimeter across, waits patiently at the base of the web’s “bowl” for gnats and other small insects to happen by. Judging by the various wrapped packages suspended in her bowl, this spider has been fairly successful.
