Week in wildlife: a hopeful pelican, peregrine chicks and cute baby numbats

Double trouble … this photo of a ladyfish snatching its prey from under an egret’s beak was the winner of the Behaviour: Birds category at the Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition. It was taken by Qingrong Yang at Yundang Lake in southeast China

A capybara explores a newly restored naturalised area at Rio de Janeiro’s Rodrigo de Freitas lagoon, Brazil. The city’s nature-based project diverted a bike path to reduce flooding and revive the lagoon’s ecosystem, its first major restoration in more than a century. A family of 10 capybaras – five adults and five pups – now lives along the lagoon’s edge, thriving in the renewed habitat

Lira, a three-year-old lioness rescued from wartorn Ukraine, undergoes dental treatment at the Big Cat Sanctuary near Ashford, Kent, UK. The operation was necessary to remove a severely infected canine tooth caused by a deep-seated abscess, the result of a trauma sustained when Lira was only a year or two old

Fight the power! A great blue heron considers breaking the rules at Lake Eola park in Orlando, Florida, US …

… while an anhinga at the same park stages a full-scale revolt

Baby numbats have been spotted at two wildlife sanctuaries in Mallee Cliffs national park, New South Wales, Australia. Despite both looking and sounding like a CBeebies animated character, the numbat is in fact one of Australia’s rarest marsupials. Five numbat joeys, including quadruplet siblings, were seen playing at Mallee Cliffs, where they have been reintroduced in predator-free areas

A European tree frog, once native to the UK, sits on a branch in an enclosure at Celtic Rewilding in Leek, Staffordshire, UK. The small frog likely went extinct in the UK in the 16th to 17th century, due to habitat loss. Celtic Rewilding is working towards the reintroduction of the species, along with agile frogs and moor frogs, all of which have gone extinct in Britain due to human impact, land degradation and climate change

Rat-trick … Belgium’s Thibaut Courtois is not quite quick enough to catch a rodent that ran on to the pitch during the World Cup qualifier between Wales and Belgium in Cardiff, UK

A bald eagle perches on a tree at Lake Apopka Wildlife Drive in Florida, US

An antidrymaeus land snail near the Arenal volcano in northern Costa Rica. The almost perfectly conical volcano has been dormant since 2010

Humboldt penguins at the Punta San Juan national reserve, Ica, Peru. Once teeming with birds, the cliffs here in the arid south of Peru are now almost deserted. Populations of sea lions and Humboldt penguins have also declined. Their colonies were decimated by avian flu in late 2022, but with the El Niño climate phenomenon driving away fish-rich waters, they have been further weakened

Two male fallow deer lock horns in Phoenix Park, Dublin, Ireland

Elimaea fallax, a species of bush cricket, perches on a leaf in Tehatta, west Bengal, India. This large katydid is known for its loud calls and leaf-mimicking camouflage

An egret stands on the back of a Camargue horse in a field near Villeneuve-lès-Béziers, southern France. The birds catch and eat the insects stirred up from the grass by the horse’s movements

Two sparrows bathe in a puddle full of autumn leaves in Titanii park, Bucharest, Romania

Peregrine falcon chicks in their nest atop a skyscraper in Melbourne, Australia. Tens of thousands of people have watched the livestream as the city’s beloved peregrine offspring prepare for their first flight

An Anna’s hummingbird basks in the sun in southwestern Oregon, US. This tiny bird, named after a 19th-century French duchess, is one of the few North American hummingbirds that can overwinter in northern regions, often enduring cold snaps by entering a state of torpor to conserve energy

An employee of France’s Mulhouse zoo releases an endangered European pond turtle into a pool near the Rhine in Neuburg am Rhein, western Germany.

Kangaroos form an admiring audience as supercars warm up for the Bathurst 1000 championship at Mount Panorama in Bathurst, New South Wales, Australia

A rhino-horned lizard at Horton Plains national park in Nuwara Eliya, Sri Lanka. Also known as Stoddart’s unicorn lizard, the reptile is slightly smaller than a human hand

Flamingos forage for food in Sebkha Séjoumi in Tunis, Tunisia

Ketchup with that? A pelican makes a grab for a falling bottle at the cafe in St James’s Park, London, UK. (The bottle was safely retrieved and moved away)