The week in wildlife – in pictures

Arctic fox cubs in Spitzbergen, Norway.

A pelagia noctiluca (
Medusa luminosa) – or mauve stinger – jellyfish drifts off the coast of north Lebanon.

A drone photo of Efteni Bird Sanctuary, which is home to 150 different species of bird and plants, in Golyaka, Turkey.

A roe deer grazes as dusk falls in the Scottish Borders.

Seagulls hunt pearl mullet in Lake Van, Turkey. Every year during spawning season, the pearl mullets start to migrate to fresh waters by moving upstream

A Red Kite takes off from the top of tree in High Wycombe, England. Red Kites are thriving in the Chilterns just over 30 years since their reintroduction.

A royal turtle hatchling being weighed at the Sre Ambel River system in Cambodia: 23 royal turtles have hatched along the Sre Ambel this year, more than the total number hatched in the past three years combined according to the Wildlife Conservation Society.

A family of Baya weavers (
Ploceus philippinus ) nest in the forest near Kathmandu, Nepal.

Large heath butterflies are returning to peatlands in greater Manchester 150 years after they went locally extinct.

Long-finned pilot whales (
Globicephala melas) are seen on a sunny day off the coast off Catalonia, Spain.

More than
30 shorebird species that cross oceans each year to visit Australia , including this Far Eastern curlew seen here in in Mai Po marshes in Hong Kong, are being hunted during their migrations. A study that analysed decades of records from 14 countries found that more than 17,000 birds from 16 species were probably being killed at just three areas – Pattani Bay in
Thailand, West Java in Indonesia and the Yangtze River delta in China.

A herd of tule elk (
Cervus canadensis nannodes) at Grizzly Island Wildlife Area, California.

Ants carrying an ant larva in Saint-Philbert-sur-Risle, northern France.

A committee of vultures descends on a tree at the Boma National Park in eastern South Sudan, home to Africa’s largest savanna and wetland and the second-largest mammal migration.

An elephant behind fences beside a motorway near a wildlife preservation site in Minneriya, Sri Lanka.

Macaque monkeys sit on a car in Hua Hin, Thailand. Monkeys are going hungry following the drop in tourism as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

A forest damaged by drought and bark beetles in the Ahrtal of Altenahr near Ahrweiler, Germany.

A woman wearing a mask walks past a poster warning people that
consuming wildlife must stop, in Guangzhou, China.

A torogoz (
Eumomota superciliosa), El Salvador’s national bird, carries a stone in its beak as it makes a nest on a rock wall near a park in San Salvador.

Traditional medicine shop selling pangolin products in Indonesia.
Supporters and practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine have warned that the discipline is threatened by those who continue to trade in endangered animals.

A Eurasian penduline tit builds a nest in the outskirts of Minsk.

Blooming purple opium poppies (
Papaver somniferum) and common red poppies (
Papaver rhoeas) in a field near Kleinebersdorf, northeastern Austria. The cultivation of the opium poppy is permitted in Austria where the seeds are mainly used for gastronomic purposes.