The week in wildlife

Week in wildlife in pictures: a strolling pelican, a venomous newt and a psychedelic swamphen

The best of this week’s wildlife photographs from around the world

An eastern water dragon, a species native to eastern Australia, basks on a bush track in Sydney. Although shy, the reptiles often set up home in suburban parks and botanical gardens. They grow to about two feet long

Photograph: Saeed Khan/AFP/Getty Images

A duck swims in a pond among algae and leaves with the arrival of autumn, at Tiergarten park in Berlin, Germany

Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images

A squirrel gets a takeaway in the Skaryszewski park in Warsaw, Poland

Photograph: Sergei Gapon/AFP/Getty Images

A western swamphen emerges from the reeds in the meadows of the Kızılırmak delta, in Samsun, Turkey. The ancient Greeks and Romans kept these striking birds as decorative pets; they can be seen on frescoes found in the ruins of Pompeii

Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images

Grey seals and their pups enjoy the isolation of Inchkeith Island in the Firth of Forth, Scotland

Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian

A motorcyclist shares the road with a wild elephant in Habarana, central Sri Lanka

Photograph: Thilina Kaluthotage/NurPhoto/Rex/Shutterstock

A coypu swims in a pond in Woippy, north-eastern France

Photograph: Jean-Christophe Verhaegen/AFP/Getty Images

A cheeky swan nabs a snack from a fisherman’s fishing platform on a dull, cloudy autumnal day in the Midlands, UK

Photograph: Lee Hudson/Alamy Live News

An African penguin emerges from its burrow at the Boulders penguin colony, which is a popular tourist destination, in Simon’s Town, near Cape Town, South Africa. The International Union for Conservation of Nature has changed the status of the African penguin from endangered to critically endangered

Photograph: Rodger Bosch/AFP/Getty Images

A wood nuthatch feeds on the seeds of a common milkweed near Csobánka, north of Budapest, Hungary

Photograph: Attila Kovács/EPA

Two white-lipped deer, or Thorold’s deer, in Dêgê county, eastern Tibet

Photograph: Xinhua/REX/Shutterstock

A mare and her foal stand in the flooded Guadaíra river in Seville, Andalusia, Spain. Although Valencia was the worst-hit region in Spain’s recent floods, Andalusia also suffered damage, with one death

Photograph: José Manuel Vidal/EPA

A rough-skinned newt crosses a country road on a rainy afternoon near Elkton in southwestern Oregon, US. These newts are particularly poisonous: their skin produces the same paralysing toxin as that made by famous by the pufferfish

Photograph: Robin Loznak/Zuma Press Wire/Rex/Shutterstock

Sunlight passes through the sail of a stranded Portuguese man-o’-war at sunrise along Front Beach, in Isle of Palms, South Carolina, US. Seasonal winds routinely blow the venomous siphonophores onshore from the passing Gulf Stream

Photograph: Planetpix/Alamy Live News

A Balinese long-tailed macaque roaming free in the forest in Padangtegal, Bali, Indonesia

Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images

A pelican named Ndagabar (which means “pelican” in the local Wolof language) makes the rounds of the neighbourhood in the early hours in Saint-Louis, Senegal

Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images