"Grass Spider" Photo Prints

Grass Spider in Great Smoky Mountains Insect Photography The Smokies are a temperate rainforest, which means they are teeming with all sorts of life outside the fireflies. After chasing lightning bugs in Elkmont, we headed over to the west side of the park during the day to hike Spruce Flats Falls, a picturesque waterfall that promised lots of interesting critters and creatures along the way. The hike delivered. It started from the Great Smoky Mountains Institute at Tremont and climbed up and over the hills to a gorgeous cascading waterfall. My group was there for the details - things like snails, interesting plants, birds, and bears all caught their attention and slowed us down quite a bit. One of them spotted this gorgeous grass spider that had woven her funnel web near the fence of a power station. The unique web of grass spiders is what caught our eye. The web is sheetlike with a funnel leading downward to a shelter). This wildlife photograph was taken with a 400mm focal length lens.