Canon 30D, handheld Mamiya 80mm at f16 Sunpak Auto 322 flash with diffuser/softbox 1/200 second at ISO 250

All the early birds

Taken in March, this comes close to representing the first visible specimens of crab spider, syrphid fly, and flower for the year – the daffodils came up earlier, but they're not typically pollinated by anything except the wind. The crab spider (family Thomisidae, I believe) knew instinctually that the flower would be attracting pollinators, and picked a nice ambush spot – I can only surmise that it was hiding under one of the upper-layer petals, because it certainly isn't blending in and one would think that even a syrphid fly (family Syrphidae) would be warned off by its appearance. I only came along to see the aftermath, as it were, but they all posed nicely on the flower, didn't they?

[I have to note, I spent way too long trying to determine what kind of flower this was, to no avail. I doubt that it's anything exotic, since it was growing in the yard, but no source of NC wildflowers provided a matching image, and I'm not going to waste any more time on it.]