The week in wildlife – in pictures

Blue sheep in Mount Qomolangma national nature reserve in Lhasa, the capital of south-west China’s Tibet Autonomous Region.

Cape fur seals (
Arctocephalus pusillus) jump out of a wave breaking on Seal Island, an important feeding area for white sharks, in False Bay, Cape Town, South Africa.

Swifts chase each other across the rooftops in London, England. Swifts have returned to the UK to breed after their epic migration for the African continent.

Squirrels climbing on a tree trunk in the Bilychi forest in Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine.

A ground squirrel seems to enjoy a warm afternoon from her perch on a farmer’s fence along a country road near Elkton in rural western Oregon, US.

Despite the lockdown, the
wildlife in Yorkshire has been emerging from hibernation – including this green hairstreak butterfly.

A dolphin spotted swimming around the port of Amsterdam is taken back to sea. The dolphin was piloted through the lock in IJmuiden by a sailing ship that he followed from Brittany, and was guided back to sea by two smaller boats.

A Coot (
Fulica atra) preens & returns to the nest for its turn incubating its eggs by the Duke of Northumberland’s River behind Twickenham Rugby Ground, now a Covid-19 testing station.

A female koala licks water off the trunk of a eucalyptus tree after rainfall in the You Yangs regional park in Little River, Victoria, Australia.

A thick-headed fly (
Myopa pellucida) sitting on a flower of marsh marigold (C
altha palustris), near a pond in Bristol. The fly is a parasitoid of mining bees. It waits on flowers and when a suitable host comes along it attack its and lays an egg inside it. When the larva hatches it eats the host bee from the inside.

Red-footed falcons (
Falco vespertinus) mate near Tiszaalpar, Hungary.

The conservationist Patricia Medici, seen here photographing the release of a tapir, has been awarded
2020 Whitley wildlife conservation Gold Award. Tapirs are the largest land mammals in South America and are considered living fossils, having survived waves of extinction over millions of years. However, they now face human threats, including destruction of their habitat owing to expansion of large-scale agriculture, cattle ranching and mining.

A
Greylag Goose which has nested in a flower bed and laid four eggs inside the now quiet York railway station. The bird, nicknamed Mother Goose, was first spotted last month by British Transport Police. The train station has fallen quiet due to government restrictions on travel.

Kangaroos in an unburnt area of bushland set to be cleared this week for a new housing development in Manyana on the south coast of New South Wales, Australia. Residents are opposed to
the development by Ozy Homes of the site, one of the few small pockets of remaining bushland which wasn’t burnt in the recent devastating bushfires.

A fishing cat (
Prionailurus viverrinus) in its enclosure at Gembira Loka zoo in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, which is closed to the public to curb the spread of the coronavirus. According to the Indonesian Zoological Association, tens of thousands of zoo animals across Indonesia are at risk of food shortage due to a
lack of revenue during the pandemic. Zoos may be allowed to feed herbivores to carnivores, as long as they are not rare or endangered species.

A
brown bear has been spotted traversing a rugged and sparsely populated area of north-west Spain for the first time in 150 years. Images of the animal were captured on cameras set up by a crew shooting the film Montana ou Morte (Mountain or Death) in the O Invernadeiro national park in Galicia’s Ourense province.

A photo by the Hong Kong Customs and Excise Department shows seized shark fins at a customs facility in Hong Kong, China. The department has made its largest shark fin seizure ever, uncovering 26 tonnes taken from 38,500 endangered sharks inside a pair of shipping containers from South America worth an estimated HK$8.6m (US$1.1m).

A sign warning visitors to remain 1.5m apart and wash hands, at Hannover zoo. The opening of zoos in Lower Saxony caused a huge rush on 6 May, after six weeks of closures because of the coronavirus crisis. Day tickets for Hannover zoo are only available online, and even those with an annual ticket must book a specific visiting time slot online in advance.

Two spotted owls (
Strix occidentalis) cuddle while perched on a tree branch in Kathmandu, Nepal. Nepal is a main destination for migratory birds coming from the southern parts of south-east Asia as well as from Africa and Australia, due to its favourable breeding environment. According to ornithologists, more than 900 birds species have been spotted in Nepal.

A mountain gorilla from the Mukiza family rests with an infant in
Bwindi Impenetrable national park, Uganda