The week in wildlife - in pictures

Grey seal, by Mark Smith. The British Wildlife Photography awards are now open for entries Photograph: Mark Smith/BWPA A blue tit sits in the trees in St James's Park in London, England. After a recent cold snap Britain is expected to see a short period of unseasonably mild weather after one of the driest Februarys on record, according to the Met Office Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images A wild boar roams in the snow near Kibbutz Merom Golan in the Golan Heights, near Israel's border with Syria Photograph: Baz Ratner/Reuters A flock of geese gathers on the banks of the Dal Lake in Srinagar, the summer capital of Indian Kashmir. There has been a considerable improvement in the weather in Indian Kashmir the India Meteorological Department of the Ministry Of Earth Sciences said on 26 February, with temperatures expected to rise up to 12C and only light snow expected Photograph: Farooq Khan/EPA Baillon's wrasse at nest, Poole Bay, Dorset, UK. The secret lives of rare fish are revealed in new photos released by Dorset Wildlife Trust. The winning images from the annual Dorset Seasearch underwater photography competition include an extraordinary photograph of a rare and beautiful fish at its nest site, showing what is believed to be previously unrecorded breeding display Photograph: Matt Doggett/Dorset Wildlife Trust One green tree left in hills of burnt-out brown and deforested land, near Mae Chaem, northern Thailand. Smog and dust-particle levels have soared to the worst levels in five years, crossing six northern Thai provinces. Poor visibility has delayed aircraft from landing and diverted other flights in at least two northern airports. Farmers who slash and burn fields at the end of the annual dry season in their traditional agricultural practices and have ignored warnings to stop the burnings are blamed for the pollution Photograph: Barbara Walton/EPA After years of incarceration, this Sumatran tiger remains anxious. It is part of a captive-breeding programme in Jakarta. The habitat of the endangered Sumatran tiger is being rapidly destroyed in order to make tissues and paper packaging for consumer products in the west, new research from Greenpeace shows Photograph: Michael K. Nichols/NG/Getty Images Five cygnets swimming behind their mother in the Merwestein Park in the centre of Dordrecht, the Netherlands Photograph: Robert Vos/EPA Two polar bears, a mother and her cub, observed from the deck of the Arctic Sunrise, while it was moored to an ice floe in the Fram Strait on the edge of the Arctic Ocean Photograph: Nick Cobbing/Greenpeace Men ride white elephants near Uppatasanti Pagoda in Burma's new capital city, Naypyitaw Photograph: Soe Zeya Tun/Reuters American robins and cedar waxwings fly in from nearby trees in Mountain View, California. A robin on the bush gives a squawk as another robin tries to land Photograph: Michael Yang/Rex Features Potac, a three-year old bear, bites the bars of his four square metres cage in Luhansk. Potac was kept by his owner, the head of a Luhansk regional children's public organisation to train hunting dogs. The Vier Pfoten (Four Paws) animal welfare organisation, together with authorities, confiscated the bear so it can be transferred to the Synevyr National Nature Park. In 2011, the Ukrainian minister of ecology and natural resources, Zlochevsky Mykola, announced a ban on the poor private captivity of brown bears Photograph: Mihai Vasile/Vier Pfoten/REUTERS Three pelicans sit on rocks, off Shamrock Island near Aransas Pass, Texas. Shell Oil is paying $500,000 for the first phase of a $2.3m project to restore the island, a nesting habitat for more than 20,000 birds Photograph: Pat Sullivan/AP A withered leaf hangs on a branch of a tree silhouetted against the grey sky in Meersburg at Bodensee, southern Germany Photograph: Tobias Kleinschmidt/AFP/Getty Images Jianhui, a five-year-old monkey, prompts a mechanical arm via brain signals at a laboratory of Zhejiang University in Hangzhou. A tiny sensor implanted in Jianhui's brain is allowing the monkey to control a mechanical arm to reach and grab food and drinks, scientists with east China's Zhejiang University announced on Monday afternoon. The technology, brain-machine interface (BMI), could help people with paralyzing conditions, according to Zheng Xiaoxiang, the professor leading the research group Photograph: China Daily/Reuters