The week in wildlife – in pictures

A swan in flight in Berlin, Germany Photograph: Daniel Naupold/EPA

A pair of Griffon vultures scrap for food in Sierra de Guara, Huesca, Aragon, Spain. The vulture population in Spain has plummeted since the introduction of European Union rules preventing farmers from leaving dead carcasses on their land Photograph: SPL /Barcroft Media

A red squirrel (Sciurus vulgaris) with its long winter ear tufts in the Cairngorms national park, Scottish Highlands, UK Photograph: Drew Buckley/REX

Crocuses sprout out of a meadow next to the Alster river during rainy weather in Hamburg, Germany Photograph: Maja Hitij/EPA

A reindeer with antlers covered in fluorescent paint to reduce the thousands of road deaths of the roaming caribou in the wilds of Finland's Lapland Photograph: Anne Ollila/REX

Two Kashmir rock agamas bask in the sun in Pangot, India Photograph: Arkaprava Ghosh/Barcroft India

An adult white-tailed eagle in a forest near the remote village of Sosnovy Bor, Belarus Photograph: Vasily Fedosenko/Reuters

A five-year-old bonobo at the Kokolopori bonobo reserve, in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Christian Ziegler from the National Geographic magazine won the third prize in Nature Stories category of the 57th World Press Photo Contest with this image Photograph: Christian Ziegler / National Geographic Magazine/EPA

Leafcutter ants transport small pieces of blackberry leaves at Frankfurt Zoo, Germany Photograph: Frank Rumpenhorst/EPA

A baby elephant sits in a ditch near a railway track in Goalpara, India. A herd of wild elephants were crossing the track in Goalpara when a calf fell into a ditch Photograph: UB Photos/Barcroft Media

A short eared owl in flight in Lancashire. Wildlife photographer Steve Ward staked out the owls for 180 hours over four months to get shots like this Photograph: Steve Ward/National

A blotched blue-tongue lizard licks one of its seven offsprings at the Wild Life Sydney Zoo Photograph: Saeed Khan/AFP/Getty Images

New Forest ponies are now officially a rare breed. Numbers of new foals have dwindled over the past five years, leaving the semi-feral animals to be listed as a minority breed for the first time Photograph: Chris Ison/PA

A mountain hare in the Scottish Highlands Photograph: Tim Stenton/Medavia.co.uk

Seagulls fly over Jinzhou in Dalian, China. The rising temperatures made sea ice melt, attracting thousands of seagulls looking for food Photograph: Xinhua/Landov/Barcroft Media

A camel walks under power pylons in the Kuwaiti desert Photograph: Stephanie Mcgehee/Reuters

There will be a wait of at least three years to assess the potential impact of additional turbines on the habitat of red-throated divers in the Thames estuary. The consortium behind the London Array development said there were 'technical challenges and environmental uncertainties' surrounding the site Photograph: Hinrich Baesemann/dpa/Corbis