Life moves pretty fast.  If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.
— Ferris Bueller (Matthew Broderick) in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

Sometimes they chase their shadows.

Sometimes their shadows chase them.

And sometimes their shadows hide beneath them, holding them up, providing the foundation upon which they travel.

Observing wildlife is one thing, but photographing it is another.  Because life is always fleeting.

Sometimes together.

Sometimes alone.

Sometimes in the city.

Sometimes in the wild.

Sometimes up close.

Sometimes at a distance.

But always fleeting.

Yes, life moves pretty fast.  If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.

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Photos:

1. Velvet ant (Dasymutilla sp.) flying over open ground in East Texas; this female will lose her wings and become a typical velvet ant as soon as she selects a good hunting-cum-nesting site
2. Giant swallowtail (Papilio cresphontes); this is the largest butterfly in Canada and the United States
3. Virginia opossum (a.k.a. possum or tlacuache; Didelphis virginiana); this is the only marsupial found north of Mexico
4. Juvenile American robin (Turdus migratorius)
5. Rock doves (a.k.a. common pigeons; Columba livia)
6. Nutria (a.k.a. coypu; Myocaster coypus)
7. Cattle egret (Bubulcus ibis) in breeding plumage
8. Diamondback water snake (Nerodia rhombifer)
9. Variegated fritillary (Euptoieta claudia)
10. Forster’s tern (Sterna forsteri)
11. White-lined sphinx (Hyles lineata)