Week in wildlife – in pictures: joyriding birds, a rare golden cat and a surprise king cobra
The best of this week’s wildlife photographs from around the world
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Jaw-dropping ... an Alaskan brown bear reaches for a salmon in a river in the Katmai National Park and Preserve. We often see photos of these bears fishing, but they also eat berries, grasses, sedges, cow parsnip, ground squirrels, carrion and roots
Photograph: Taylor Thomas Albright/Mediadrumimages
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A fawn is carried to safety in Mehaigne, Belgium. The man doing the carrying is Cedric Petit, founder of Sauvons Bambi (Let’s Save Bambi), an organisation that rescues deer, hares and ground-nesting birds that have hidden under long grass in fields and meadows that are about to be ploughed up by farmers. Sauvons Bambi uses drones equipped with heat-sensitive cameras to find the animals; volunteers then move them to the edge of the field, where the mother can find them again. This year it has saved 834 fawns across Belgium and Luxembourg
Photograph: John Thys/AFP/Getty Images
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A vet looks after an Asian golden cat after it was seized from an illegal animal hunter in Banda Aceh, Indonesia. These solitary wildcats are two or three times the size of a domestic cat, and live in the forests of southeast Asia. Listed as “near threatened”, they are poached mainly for their fur
Photograph: Chaideer Mahyuddin/AFP/Getty Images
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An Atlantic puffin with a beak full of sand eels heads to feed its chicks on Skomer Island, Wales, UK. This year, wardens have tallied more than 41,000 puffins nesting on Skomer
Photograph: Ed Brown/Cover Images
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A newborn giant panda cub rests in an incubator at the Guangzhou Chimelong Safari Park in southern China. At birth it weighed just 178g – less than a hamster. Its mother, Mengmeng, is the eldest of the world’s only panda triplets
Photograph: Southern Metropolis Daily/VCG/Getty Images
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A ladybird colony in Kahramanmaraş, Turkey
Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images
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Kestrel chicks look out from their nest on the side of a house in Rochdale, UK. They are about to take flight for the first time
Photograph: Gemma DeCet/Animal News Agency
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Baby birds wait in a nest made by their mother in the middle of a lavender field in Demircihalil, Turkey
Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images
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Geese form an orderly queue in Kuyucuk, Turkey, near the eastern border with Armenia. Spring wildflowers bloom later than usual in the region, thanks to its high altitude and harsh climate
Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images
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Two turkeys squabble in Santa Cruz, California, US
Photograph: JodiFrediani/Caters News
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Feeling the pinch ... Hercules beetles feeding on dead wood in Boyaca, Colombia. The insects – which look small in this photo, but are actually about 15cm long – have been recruited by engineer German Viasus. He releases beetle larvae into concrete ditches full of food waste and soil. As they grow, the larvae chew through the fruit and vegetable scraps, digest them and produce high-quality compost, which is then filtered and sold
Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images
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A juvenile starling perches on a horse near Frankfurt, Germany
Photograph: Michael Probst/AP
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Black caimans in Corumbá, southwestern Brazil. They are an apex predator that will prey on just about any animal they can find, from snails to dogs to cows, and even other black caimans
Photograph: Pablo Porciúncula/AFP/Getty Images
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A woman was left in shock after walking into her bathroom to find a king cobra emerging from her toilet in Rajasthan, India. The highly venomous reptile was removed by a professional snake rescuer
Photograph: Newslions/SWNS
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Red-billed oxpeckers travel on top of a wild boar at Mikumi National Park, Tanzania. They live on blood-filled ticks attached to the hides of rhinos and boars, but they also peck their hosts to take some blood for themselves
Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images
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Bedraggled owlets are rescued from a fallen tree after a powerful storm in Podgorica, Montenegro
Photograph: Risto Božović/AP
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Zebras huddle together at Serengeti National Park, Tanzania
Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images
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A cucumber green spider spins its web at Aluçdagı Nature Park, Ankara, Turkey
Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images