The week in wildlife – in pictures

A male loggerhead sea turtle glides through the pristine waters off the coast of Sal, Cape Verde. It is boom time for the country’s sea turtles as conservation has paid off and the number of nesting sites on the archipelago has risen dramatically

Photograph: Annika Hammerschlag
A bevy of swans in Windsor, UK. There are at least 20 cygnets on this stretch of the River Thames

Photograph: Maureen McLean/Rex/Shutterstock
A wild hippo, nicknamed Steve, visits the Turgwe Hippo Trust headquarters in Chiredzi, Zimbabwe. The facility opened in 1992 to feed wild hippos and provide them with water during droughts

Photograph: Karen Paolillo/Rex/Shutterstock
A European firebug (Pyrrhacoris apterus) in Toronto, Canada

Photograph: Creative Touch Imaging/NurPhoto/Rex/Shutterstock
Horses cast shadows in a field in Swillington in West Yorkshire, UK

Photograph: Danny Lawson/PA
The Bengal monitor, or common Indian monitor (Varanus bengalensis), in Tehatta, India. The monitors are carnivorous, mainly terrestrial, non-poisonous and grow between 61-175cm long. The monitor lizard is protected but is regularly killed for its meat, blood and oil, and is wrongly thought to be a cure for several ailments

Photograph: Soumyabrata Roy/NurPhoto/Rex/Shutterstock
Giraffes refresh themselves at a watering hole. The Guardian has partnered with the Alycats, award-winning photographers who devote their time to fighting illegal wildlife hunting and poaching in Africa, in support of the Singita Conservation Foundation. The Alycats have curated six prints exclusively for the Guardian Print Shop. As part of our collaboration, we will donate 50% of all print sales to support the foundation’s unswerving work

Photograph: Carol Allen Storey
An endangered female Grevy’s zebra foal, named Izara, born in Singapore Zoo. It is thought there are fewer than 2,500 Grevy’s zebras in the wild

Photograph: Suhaimi Abdullah/NurPhoto/Rex/Shutterstock
Flamingos fly at the Ebro Delta nature reserve in Poble Nou del Delta, Spain. With rising seas threatening to engulf low-lying shores, the Spanish government aims to buy 832 hectares of private land in the Ebro Delta in what would be Europe’s largest climate-related land buyouts to date

Photograph: Nacho Doce/Reuters
Sheep graze eat seaweed on a beach in North Ronaldsay, Orkney, Scotland. Thousands of sheep happily munch on seaweed all winter, a unique diet that scientists say offers hope for reducing planet-warming methane emissions. The distinctive native sheep with brown, beige or black wool, learned to survive on the foreshore, eating the most commonly available food, seaweed

Photograph: Adrian Dennis/AFP/Getty Images
Sallysue Stein, the founder and acting executive director of the Gold Country Wildlife Rescue returns a raccoon to a cage after being treated for burns on its paws, at the facility in Auburn, California. Gold Country is one of the rescue groups treating wild animals injured in the recent wildfires that have ravaged the US state

Photograph: Rich Pedroncelli/AP
A grey crowned crane walks along the shore in Lake Baringo National Park, Kenya. The country has more than 1,000 species of birds, 261 mammals, and 6,500 species of plants. Wildlife plays a significant role in Kenya’s socioeconomic development, serving as one of the biggest draws for tourism, the country’s largest source of foreign currency revenue

Photograph: Daniel Irungu/EPA
A rare ringed seal found injured in Aberdeen, Scotland. This type of seal has been sighted in the UK about only 30 times in the past century. The Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals looked after the animal before releasing him back to the waters off Shetland

Photograph: SSPCA/PA
A coppersmith barbet pecks on a tree trunk in Yangon, Myanmar

Photograph: Xinhua/Rex/Shutterstock
Ants gather on a palm oil fruit in a protected area of the Rawa Singkil wildlife reserve in Trumon, Indonesia

Photograph: Chaideer Mahyuddin/AFP/Getty Images
Black Corsican pigs in Bastelica, on the French Mediterranean island

Photograph: Pascal Pochard-Casabianca/AFP/Getty Images
A critically endangered black rhino calf, born at Flamingo Land zoo in North Yorkshire, UK, stands with its mother. The baby, which is yet to be named, is the first eastern black rhinoceros to be born in Yorkshire, and continues the zoo’s conservation work, which includes two rhinos leaving the site to be released into the wild in Africa

Photograph: Flamingo Land Resort/PA
A striped feline leaps from a rock under the shade of a tree. As its front paws touch the ground, the whiskered creature looks up, eyes darting left. A wildlife camera clicks and captures the scene. It’s a cat and the location isn’t a remote rainforest but the capital of the US. The photo is part of the DC Cat Count, a first-of-its-kind three-year effort by animal welfare advocates, conservationists and scientists to enumerate every Felis catus in Washington

Photograph: DC Cat Count/Humane Rescue Allia/AFP/Getty Images