World Wide Webs

By the most recent count (not mine) there are more than 35,000 species of spiders in the world. About 3,000, give or take, live here in North America. I find it reassuring that there might be an equal number of spiders living out there without names, because names don’t matter to them.
Spiders were kind of on my mind this morning as I hiked a section of the Buckeye Trail that runs through the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. This section is a favorite of ours. It’s sometimes called the Bluebird Trail because of the extensive number of nesting boxes installed along the way. Someone’s research project, I suppose. Susan and I refer to part of the trail as Warbler Ridge since we’ve had exceptional luck in the spring catching the northward movement of warblers over this spot.
Today it was just me, a nice selection of woodpecker species, a few Eastern Phoebes—and the spiders. Early morning is a great time to venture into the woods to see the vast array of webs, evidence of last night’s efforts. When you look over a field in the low morning light, it’s hard to imagine how many spiders must have been working to create this sea of webs. Or how many other insects were captured and eaten.
And while you might see the webs, rarely do you see the creatures that made the webs. Since most spiders have eight eyes and six legs, it’s understandable how they disappear before we see them. But left behind, we can see the canvas on which they’ve worked and the art they’ve created. Particularly, when covered with morning dew, there is a rich palette of clouds, waves and strings of pearls.