Wakodahatchee wetlands, Delray Beach, Florida, US. Equipped with sinewy necks and spear-like bills, great blue herons can lunge with fearsome speed to strike their aquatic prey. Adults will also employ rapid stabbing motions as one aspect of their complex courtship displays; they’re seemingly dangerous moves, but fitting to the intensity of mating season. (Photo by Melissa Rowell/Audubon Photography Awards)

Take me away, deer, Russia. The Nenet people of Arctic Russia use reindeer and sledges as a prime mode of transport. The animals’ navigational ability means that in severe conditions they are sometimes the only hope of survival. (Photo by Kamil Nureev/Smithsonian Photo Contest)

A woman poses for a friend next to blossoming trees in the A.V. Fomin Botanical Garden, in Kyiv, Ukraine, Wednesday, April 10, 2024. (Photo by Vadim Ghirda/AP Photo)

A boy kicks a football in Dudley Page Reserve as storm clouds gather over the city skyline on September 30, 2021 in Sydney, Australia. The Bureau of Meteorology has issued severe storm warnings for the city. (Photo by Mark Evans/Getty Images)

Tourists visit teamLab Planets Tokyo in Tokyo on January 10, 2025. Japan on January 15 will announce tourist figures for the year 2024, widely expected to break the record set in 2019. (Photo by Kazuhiro Nogi/AFP Photo)

Volunteer of the SICS “Italian rescue dog school”, during a water rescue training session, inside the Averno lake in Pozzuoli. Italy, on October 26, 2024. (Photo by Vincenzo Izzo/Sipa USA)

Police officers check documents of a man in central Moscow, Russia, Sunday, June 25, 2023. (Photo by Dmitri Lovetsky/AP Photo)

A rainstorm moves over the Atlantic Ocean after passing through Camden, Maine, at sunset, Tuesday, August 1, 2023. (Photo by Robert F. Bukaty/AP Photo)