Gina Labianca (L) tries on a super woman outfit as Charlie Lucas tries a snow white Costume at the Halloween MegaStore Miami Beach on October 21, 2011 in Miami Beach, Florida. The megastore is a temporary location for the store which opened for the holiday to sell costumes, masks and other items to people needing to dress up for the evening of October 31 when costumed people around the world observe the day. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

A parakeets lands on a woman's head at St James' Park in London, United Kingdom on February 9, 2021. London has been experiencing snow as the Storm Darcy hits the city. (Photo by Brett Cove/SOPA Images/Sipa USA)

Giant pandas play in the snow at the Shenshuping Base of China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda on January 13, 2022 in Aba Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province of China. (Photo by Chen Xianlin/VCG via Getty Images)

A snow leopard looks on from an inside of a cage, after being captured from the southern plains of Nepal and brought to the central zoo, which wildlife experts say is rare for the animal that is found in the higher altitude, in Kathmandu, Nepal on January 26, 2024. (Photo by Navesh Chitrakar/Reuters)

Goats covered with cloth are tied next to a hut on a cold winter morning in New Delhi on December 26, 2023. (Photo by Arun Sankar/AFP Photo)

National Geographic photographer Steve Winter has spent most of his adult life shooting wild cats. Photo: A 14-month-old cub, cooling off in a pond, is riveted by a deer that appeared near the shore. Tigers are powerful swimmers; they can easily cross rivers four to five miles wide and have been known to swim distances of up to 18 miles. (Photo by Steve Winter/National Geographic)

Commended. In late May, about a quarter of a million snow geese arrive from North America to nest on Wrangel Island, in northeastern Russia. They form the world's largest breeding colony of snow geese. Photographer Sergey Gorshkov spent two months on the remote island photographing the unfolding dramas. Arctic foxes take advantage of the abundance of eggs, caching surplus eggs for leaner times. But a goose (here the gander) is easily a match for a fox, which must rely on speed and guile to steal eggs. “The battles were fairly equal”, notes Sergey, “and I only saw a fox succeed in grabbing an egg on a couple of occasions, despite many attempts”. Surprisingly, “the geese lacked any sense of community spirit”, he adds, “and never reacted when a fox harassed a neighboring pair nesting close by”. (Photo by Sergey Gorshkov/Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer)