A cool morning’s dew clings to the silken orb, the tiny droplets capturing and magnifying slanting rays of sunshine.

While perhaps more subtle than the radiant reds and fluorescent oranges of autumn, the spider’s web is every bit a part of the season, say those in the know.

That would include Nancy Coverstone. And she says now’s the time to enjoy “the beastie on the phlox.”

Coverstone is an educator with Cooperative Extension at the University of Maine.

“This is the time of year,” she says. “The insect time.”

Bugs, and that includes the yellow-and-black garden spiders that weave those spectacular oval webs found stretched between strands of wire fence or linking plant leaves, “are more active now,” says Coverstone.

Dave Struble chuckled a bit when asked about spiders and their frequent sightings now. Struble is Maine’s state entomologist.

“This is not the first call I’ve had about spiders,” he noted. “People are just seeing them now; they’re more visible.”

That’s in part because many spiders are nearing the end of their life cycles, says Jim Dill, an entomologist and pest management specialist with the Extension Service.

Those that hatched over the summer months are busily spinning webs to catch meals – in some instances a last supper, he notes. Other species – and this includes the yellow-and-black garden variety – will lay an egg mass in a brownish silken sac. Soon, the eggs hatch and the infant spiderlings will overwinter in the sac.

Struble says the types of webs people see will vary sometimes by month.

Earlier in the summer, he noted, webs resembling a tattered handkerchief could be seen sprawled across lawns. Funnel webs are another type, again usually found on the ground.

Now, the more traditional orb or oval webs are in vogue.

Dill said Maine has hundreds of varieties of spiders. The yellow-and-black garden spider and the grayish-brown barn spider are among the more commonly seen. Both tend to construct oval-type webs.

A barn spider gave Maine author E.B. White his inspiration for “Charlotte’s Web.” Unlike the garden spider, barn spiders tend to be shy. They often destroy their webs as the sun rises to avoid detection, then re-create them at night to catch their prey.

Not all spiders spin webs. Free-hunting spiders include the wolf and crab spiders. Both stalk their prey.

Dill and Coverstone say all spiders are beneficial. They typically eat insects and other spiders that would annoy people and sometimes destroy fruit, vegetables and other vegetation.

And no spider native to Maine is particularly dangerous to people, although virtually all are venomous.

Sometimes, Dill said, a brown recluse spider native to southern climes might hitch a ride into the state, just as a black widow spider could arrive here uninvited. Either could inject some nasty venom with its fangs, but unless someone had an unusual allergy, the bite wouldn’t be fatal.

Coverstone, the Cooperative Extension educator, says she actually likes spiders “as long as they’re not crawling all over me.” She also likes snakes, she adds, but “I’ve never handled one.”