The week in wildlife – in pictures

Burkina Faso’s sacred crocodiles, a family of cheetahs and a humpback whale are among this week’s pick of images from the natural world

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  • A male scarlet honeyeater feeding on a bottlebrush tree in Brisbane, Australia
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    A male scarlet honeyeater feeding on a bottlebrush tree in Brisbane, Australia


  • Egrets sit in trees as they warm up in the morning sun at Zoo Lake, Johannesburg, South Africa
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    Egrets sit in trees as they warm up in the morning sun at Zoo Lake, Johannesburg, South Africa


  • A roe deer in a field near Herrnleis, Austria
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    A roe deer in a field near Herrnleis, Austria


  • A fledgling blue tit clings on to a garden ornament in Stirlingshire, Scotland, UK
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    A fledgling blue tit clings on to a garden ornament in Stirlingshire, Scotland, UK


  • Walrus swimming near the Austfonna ice cap, Svalbard, Norway
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    Walrus swimming near Austfonna icecap, Svalbard, Norway


  • White herons chase a tractor to catch unearthed worms at a rice paddy in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province, South Korea
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    White herons chase a tractor to catch unearthed worms at a rice paddy in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province, South Korea


  • A boy sits on the back of a crocodile at a pond in Bazoule in Burkina Faso, a village which happily shares its local pond with ‘sacred’ crocodiles. According to local legend, the startling relationship with the predators dates back to at least the 15th century when the village was in the grip of an agonising drought until the crocodiles led some women to a hidden pond
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    A boy sits on the back of a crocodile at a pond in Bazoule in Burkina Faso


  • A common swift flies from a nesting box in Hilperton, Wiltshire, UK. In the last 20 years, Britain’s breeding population of the birds has halved
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    A common swift flies from a nesting box in Hilperton, Wiltshire, UK


  • A humpback whale breaching near a dolphin over Stellwagen Bank, near Cape Cod in the Atlantic, US
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    A humpback whale breaching near a dolphin over Stellwagen Bank, near Cape Cod in the Atlantic, US


  • A family of elephants are spotted during a trial run for an aerial census at the Amboseli national park in Kenya. Amboseli is among the most renowned case studies in the world for elephant population and behavioural factors with the last official count of the perchyderms, carried out in 2011, yielding some 1,200 animals
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    A family of elephants are spotted during a trial run for an aerial census at the Amboseli national park in Kenya


  • A small joey wallaby lies where it died a slow death, lying on it’s dead mother who was hit by a car on a road in Exeter, Tasmania, Australia. Tasmania has one of the highest rates of roadkill in the world with between 377,000 and 1.5 million animals killed per year. Research suggests that if official speed limits were lowered at dusk and dawn in high density wildlife areas, tens of thousands of animals would be saved. The young joeys are dependent on their mothers and many motorists drive on after a hit without checking to save a life
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    A small joey wallaby lies where it died a slow death, lying on it’s dead mother who was hit by a car and killed, on a road gutter in Exeter, Tasmania, Australia


  • An Adonis blue butterfly pair on an oxeye daisy in the Cotswolds, England
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    An Adonis blue butterfly pair on an oxeye daisy


  • A pair of lesser whistling ducks search for food in the polluted Daya River on the outskirts of Bhubaneswar city, Odisha, India
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    A pair of lesser whistling ducks search for food in the polluted river Daya on the outskirt of Bhubaneswar city, India


  • A cheetah mother and cubs, Masai Mara, Kenya, where a recent study has found that tourism is preventing the animals from raising their young
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    Cheetah mother and cubs, Masai Mara, Kenya


  • A balloon and other debris removed from a sea turtle, North Stradbroke Island, Queensland, Australia
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    A balloon and other debris removed from a sea turtle, North Stradbroke Island, Queensland, Australia


  • A flame skimmer dragonfly in Topanga, California, US
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    A flame skimmer dragonfly


  • Young hatchings intercepted by police as they were being smuggled out of Mexico. Interpol said a giant operation against illegal trade in wildlife and timber resulted in millions of dollars-worth of seizures and the identification of 1,400 suspects across the world. The long-month operation involved 93 countries in May, the statement said.
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    Young hatchings intercepted by police as they were being smuggled out of Mexico


  • Flamingoes at Lake Amboseli during a trial run for the national park’s aerial animal census, Kenya
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    Flamingoes at Lake Amboseli during a trial run for the national park’s aerial animal census, Kenya


  • A Puss moth caterpillar resting on an aspen tree leaf just after it has shed its skin, UK
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    A Puss moth caterpillar resting on an aspen tree leaf just after it has shed its skin, UK
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