Crab Spider In My Garden 082612

My friend Shawn and I do home brew recipes fairly regularly, and sometimes he likes to add flavorings to his batches.  He wanted to try some peppermint, so I told him I would pick some fresh sprigs from my garden for him to use.  These are the piles I picked from this past weekend:

Before starting to clip all of the flower buds from the mint sprigs, I noticed that there was a fly on one of the leaves that wasn't moving:

Upon closer examination, I noticed that the dead fly was in the grasp of a crab spider:

So of course I had to grab my macro lens:

The spider's natural camouflage works well.  Here's a sweat-bee that just landed for some nourishment, unaware that the predator was waiting:



Opening up his front pinchers in anticipation:

 The eyes are fascinating:


Waiting patiently for the sweat-bee to inch closer:

This fly was in the wrong spot at the wrong time:

The crab's pinchers sink in to drain fluid from the fly:

Through with his latest meal, the crab spider returns to await his next victim: