Spiders of the Everglades.

Spiders. In the Florida Everglades, there are lots of Spiders around taking in the sunshine and the swampy heat spinning their silken threads on the flowers and plants and eating bugs, dragonflies and mosquitoes. Big spiders like the Golden Silk Orb Weaver are the easiest to spot as they are 3/3 inches in size. But about 80% of all spiders in the Everglades beautiful swamp are to small to see without a magnifying glass.

Spider Species. It is estimated that there may be as many as 20,000 spiders to every acre of land in the Everglades National Park. The subtropical climate promotes a great diversity of species some native and some visitors that decided to stay. Spiders are among the most beautiful examples of bug biodiversity in the swamp.


Photographing The Spiders.

Photography Tips. Photographing Spiders is a great experience, best done at dawn or sunset, but can be done all day as the spiders do not go very far. But dawn is the best time if there has been a heavy dew during the night. The dew drops make the webs stand out in the dawns golden light. A macro or macro zoom lens is needed. Keep to around f5.6 or less to get a blurry background. Be very patient with focus as this will make or break your pictures, use manual focus and look all around for the best angles.