A four-month-old snow fox cub named “Vesna” (“Spring”) leaps next to a Zoo employee at the Royev Ruchey Zoo in Krasnoyarsk, Russia, on August 6, 2013. (Photo by Ilya Naymushin/Reuters)

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)

A girl wears a face mask to curb the spread of the coronavirus as she attends a prayer ceremony to mark the holiday of “Enkutatash”, the first day of the new year in the Ethiopian calendar, which is traditionally associated with the return of the Queen of Sheba to Ethiopia some 3,000 years ago, at Bole Medhane Alem Ethiopian Orthodox Cathedral in the capital Addis Ababa, Ethiopia Friday, September 11, 2020. (Photo by Mulugeta Ayene/AP Photo)

A girl poses in antlers ahead of a curfew on pub in Nottingham, a city in central England’s Midlands region on September 21, 2020 as Freshers' Week got underway. Revellers were also pictured out in Birmingham, which was plunged into a local lockdown amid a surge in coronavirus cases. (Photo by Ashley Kirk/The Sun)

A monolith placed in the Utah wilderness in November 2020. New clues have surfaced in the disappearance of the gleaming monolith that seemed to melt away as mysteriously as it appeared in the red-rock desert. A Colorado photographer told a TV station in Salt Lake City that he saw four men push over the hollow, stainless steel structure last Friday night. (Photo by Terrance Siemon/AP Photo)

A young girl splashes through a waterfall at a park in Washington, DC, on June 28, 2021, as a heatwave moves over much of the United States. Swathes of the United States and Canada endured record-setting heat on June 27, 2021, forcing schools and Covid-19 testing centers to close and the postponement of an Olympic athletics qualifying event, with forecasters warning of worse to come. The village of Lytton in British Columbia broke the record for Canada's all-time high, with a temperature of 46.6 degrees Celsius (116 Fahrenheit), said Environment Canada. (Photo by Jim Watson/AFP Photo)

A resident reacts as a health worker collects a swab sample to test for the Covid-19 coronavirus in Colombo on July 27, 2021. (Photo by Ishara S. Kodikara/AFP Photo)

A model presents a creation by designer Anja Gockel during the Fashion Week in Berlin, Germany, September 7, 2021. (Photo by Michele Tantussi/Reuters)