The Texas Spotted Whiptail is a slender, very fast lizard with a long tail. This one scuttled quickly under a prickly pear as I walked up the trail from Cactus Flat to Fox Pavilion that day, and then peeked out at me before disappearing where I was not about to follow. The spots that give it the name are clearly visible on its side. It's very similar to the Six-lined Racerunner (which is much greener, and doesn't have the spots.)
For such shots, the ability to zoom in and use manual focus are essential, and the flash helps, too.
Edit note next morning: I hope all those who've followed the writing posts noticed the big fat grammar mistake in the sentence before this one...that's right, multiple objects of a prepositional phrase do not govern the number of a verb--the subject does.
It should read "...the ability to zoom in and use manual focus is (not are) essential..."
I'd like to blame the error on how tired I was late last night, but the take-home lesson is that anyone, no matter how experienced, can make mistakes in writing. If you fix them before they're in print, no one will ever know...but if you push "send" or "post" without proofreading...well, you get to 'fess up in public. (Yes, I could've just edited the mistake away...but it's a good example of typical error-generation.)