Week in wildlife in pictures: bears caught in the act, a glamorous seal and a fugitive emu

Pelican crossing … A girl shares a bench with a pelican in the beautiful late September sunshine in St James’s Park, London, UK. The water birds have lived in and around the park since 1664

“Where are you going to, little brown mouse? Come and have lunch in my underground house”. A red fox hopes there’s no Gruffalo about as it eyes a mouse at Lakefront Promenade Park in Toronto, Canada

Rescuers and volunteers try to save killer whales stranded at the mouth of the Bol’shaya Vorovskaya River on the Sea of Okhotsk, on the Kamchatka peninsula, eastern Russia. All four whales were safely escorted out to deeper waters

“Draw me like one of your French girls” … a seal on the banks of the River Stour near Ramsgate in Kent, UK. The Zoological Society of London is conducting its annual seal census to build a comprehensive picture of the population of adult seals and pups born during the breeding season in the Thames estuary

A pine marten takes its first step into the wild at a secret location in Devon, UK. Eight adult females and seven males have been relocated to Dartmoor in a project led by the Devon Wildlife Trust, which was six years in the planning. “We haven’t had pine martens here for 150 years, and to see them moving out into this landscape to explore it and find their way is really exciting,” said a trust conservation manager

Brown bears forage for food in rubbish bins in Sarıkamış district of Kars, Turkey. The area is home to the world’s only migratory brown bears: they hibernate there in the winter, then walk to a more food-rich forest 250km away in the spring. But some, like these, are increasingly relying on human rubbish tips for food

A deer crosses a lake near Grabownica in southwest Poland

A rat looks out nervously during a two-day campaign by the Jaipur development authority to get rid of rodents at Albert Hall Museum and the nearby Ramniwas Bagh park, in Jaipur, Rajasthan, India. “The number of rats is estimated in thousands,” said the gardens’ superintendent. After finding large mounds of earth nearby, officials were worried that the rodents might chew their way up into the museum from underground, putting priceless artefacts at risk

A white rhinoceros drinks water at Lake Nakuru National Park in Kenya

Have You Seen This Bird? Irwin the emu went missing from his home in the Malmesbury Animal Sanctuary on Monday. The Wiltshire refuge has since shared pictures of emu poo and feathers in the hope that members of the public might spot something. As of Thursday he had not yet turned up, but his keepers have not given up hope: “He could survive for a long time simply foraging and ambling along in the hedgerows so please do carry on keeping a look out,” they said

Longhorn crazy ants carry eggs and pupae, along with queens, as they seek out a new home. This movement was prompted by water seeping into their nest through a crack in the wall in Tehatta, West Bengal, India, on a rainy day

A heron lands with a flourish off a beach in Kuwait City, Kuwait

Say hello to the Mount Po Ma Lung toothed toad, formerly unknown to science, which has just been discovered in Vietnam. Scientists were trekking through what is known as the country’s “froggy hotspot” in search of its relative, Sterling’s toothed toad, but were surprised to find this new species instead. True to its name, it does have small teeth on the roof of its mouth, which it uses to hold prey

These baby parrots were rescued by firefighters from a wildfire in Concepcion, Boliva. The country has registered so far this year a total of 3,872,498 hectares of forests and grasslands destroyed by fires, more than in all of 2023

Young stags clash in a field near the town of Lipjan, Kosovo

Glide’n’seek … a camera has been installed inside a tree hollow in New South Wales, Australia, delivering a livestream of the resident greater gliders. Viewers can see the pair of endangered possums groom each other, cuddle and squabble – with their tiny baby even making an appearance

Two storks stand in their nest in Wehrheim near Frankfurt, Germany

Coffee break … a monkey sits near visitors at Lake Nakuru National Park in Nakuru, Kenya

Sentinel, one of the winners called of the Siena photo awards, by Liron Gertsman. The British Columbia-based photographer had to trek tens of kilometres through powdery snow (in showshoes) before he spotted this elusive northern hawk owl

Biologists from Fluminense Federal University take care of sea turtles, carrying out tests and cleaning them before returning them to the sea in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Pollution in Guanabara Bay is taking its toll on the wildlife there

A white pelican comes in for landing at a bird sanctuary in Turkey