When it is hot and muggy out it pays to go hiking early in the day, before the morning dew disappears. Funnel Weaver spiders are very common, they build their webs low to the ground in the grasses. Unlike the more traditional spider web of the Orb Weaver, Funnel Weaver webs are more like thinly stretched cotton with fairly randomly oriented threads and more thickness. They are not easy to spot in the afternoon, but they really shine in the early morning dew, as these images from the Great Marsh trail in the Indiana Dunes will attest.
Tiny threads running between the top and bottom of a folded leaf have trapped tiny droplets of water within them.
A large number of smaller droplets have coalesced into a single larger body of water. Notice how it is delicately suspended on the threads of the webbing. A beautiful example of a property of water called surface tension.
Click on this image to view it full size and you can see the underlying structure of the webbing which holds these tiny water drops seemingly suspended in midair.
You can see the whole world around you within the larger drops. This is the result of the manner in which water alters the path of light. Viewed from above like this the drop produces an image of everything around it, including the photographer who is visible in the large drop on the left. Can you spot him?
As the water beads up smaller droplets come into contact with one another and coalesce into larger drops, sometimes forming features which look a little like rivers.
Very nice, Mark. I found dewy webs like this in the yard several years ago and also took pix. They are beautiful! I never get up early these days, though, so I have to just spray the hose on them if I want to see the bubbles. ☺️