The week in wildlife – in pictures

Cross River gorillas caught in a camera trap in the Afi Mountain wildlife sanctuary in Nigeria.

Photograph: Wildlife Conservation Society/PA
A seal known as Mrs Vicar because the white plastic band that was stuck around her neck when she was rescued two-and-a-half years after she was first sighted off the Norfolk coast. She has been released back into the wild after being nurtured back to health by the RSPCA.

Photograph: RSPCA/PA
A brown hare clearing rain from its fur in Whitewell, UK.

Photograph: John Eveson/Alamy Live News
A rare Caucasian wingnut tree at Blenheim Palace has produced its finest summer floral displays in living memory. The tree’s catkins can reach half a metre in length. The fast-growing deciduous tree was introduced to Britain in the 1780s. Fossil records dating back more than 2.5m years have been found in Turkey.

Photograph: Blenheim Palace
Toa the orca is monitored by a volunteer at Plimmerton boating club in Wellington, New Zealand. The stranded male calf was found separated from its pod and caught in the rocks on 11 July. Officials and volunteers have been taking shifts to care for him while the search for his pod continues. The local Ngati Toa people have named him Toa, meaning ‘brave’ or ‘strong’.

Photograph: Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images
A yellowbilled hornbill in Chiredzi, Zimbabwe.

Photograph: Karen Paolillo/Rex/Shutterstock
A wader crosses dunaliella salina micro-algae by Lake Chokrak in Russia.

Photograph: Sergei Malgavko/TASS
An animal sprints across a road as the Sugar fire, part of the Beckwourth complex fire, burns in Plumas National Forest, California. Wildfires brought on by extreme heatwaves have engulfed nearly a million acres across the US west.

Photograph: Noah Berger/AP
A mute swan with one of her two cygnets in Abington Park, UK.

Photograph: Keith J Smith./Alamy Live News
The common mime (papilio clytia) is a swallowtail butterfly most often found in south and south-east Asia. It is seen here in Tehatta, India.

Photograph: Soumyabrata Roy/NurPhoto/Rex/Shutterstock
The Amazon rainforest is now emitting more carbon dioxide than it is able to absorb, scientists confirmed for the first time this week.

Photograph: Carl de Souza/AFP/Getty Images
A baby beaver with its mother at the National Trust’s Holnicote estate in Somerset. The kit was seen swimming on the estate in Exmoor where beavers were introduced in January 2020 for the first time in the trust’s 125-year history. The baby beaver was named after footballer Marcus Rashford our the National Trust honoured the results of a poll to name the beaver

Photograph: National Trust/PA
Critically endangered vultures in Siem Pang wildlife sanctuary in Cambodia. Three species are on the edge of extinction. Only 121 were recorded during a June census this year, a slight drop from 129 counted during last year’s census. They include 20 red-headed, 66 white-rumped and 35 slender-billed vultures.

Photograph: Xinhua/Rex/Shutterstock
Elephants play at a waterhole. More than 150 wildlife photographers are taking part in a sale of wildlife prints to raise money for African Parks, a South Africa-based conservation NGO.

Photograph: Tami Walker/Courtesy of Prints For Wildlife
A ladybird rests on a wild flower in the evening sunshine in Dunsden Green, UK.

Photograph: Geoffrey Swaine/Rex/Shutterstock
A grey whale off Cape Shipunsky on Russia’s Pacific coast.

Photograph: Yelena Vereshchaka/TASS
Fur seals rest along the northern shore in St George, Alaska. Hundreds of thousands of fur seals spend their summer here each year.

Photograph: Nathan Howard/Reuters