The week in wildlife – in pictures

Birds take off from a lake in Bucharest, Romania, which is experiencing a warmer-than-usual winter Photograph: Vadim Ghirda/AP Two fallow deers look for food in a pile of withered leaves at the Grafenbergerwald wildlife park in Duesseldorf, Germany Photograph: Horst Ossinger/EPA An Asian short-clawed otter eating a fish at Chester Zoo, which has a breeding programme for the species Photograph: Phil Noble/Reuters Flowers captured in Regent's Park, London Photograph: Carl Court/AFP/Getty Images Monkeys help themselves to eat fruit handed out by devout Hindus on a foggy morning in New Delhi, India. Tuesday is the day of the Hindu monkey god Hanuman, and so fruit and other food is handed out to monkeys by devotees in order to rid themselves of sin Photograph: Saurabh Das/AP A cluster of monarch butterflies, shot from below. Every year over 25,000 monarch butterflies huddle together to conserve heat on the pine and eucalyptus trees of Monarch Grove Sanctuary, in Pacific Grove, California. It is thought the butterflies come from as far north as Canada Photograph: Michael Yang/Rex Features Storks at the Marquenterre ornithological park in northern France. Located in the Bay of Somme nature reserve, the park has been awarded the Grands sites de France label. For more wetlands photos, see our latest Green Shoots gallery Photograph: Philippe Huguen/AFP/Getty Images An inquisitive raccoon in Stanley Park in Vancouver, Canada Photograph: Luke Massey/Rex Features Spider and web in the jungle of Chitwan national park in Nepal – one of the major tourist destinations in the country Photograph: Narendra Shrestha/EPA A harp seal pup lies on an ice floe in Charlottetown, Canada. This week it was claimed that thinning ice due to climate change has killed enough seals to render the annual cull unnecessary Photograph: Joe Raedle/Getty Images Waxy tree frogs on a London zookeeper's hand. The zoo has been taking its annual stocktake Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images The critically endangered Panthera pardus orientalis or the amur leopard – a leopard subspecies native to south-west Russia. There are as few as 35 are left in the wild; this beauty lives in Edinburgh Zoo Photograph: Murdo MacLeod A pair of whooper swans on a partly frozen field in Perthshire, Scotland Photograph: Russell Cheyne/Reuters A grey-headed flying fox bat keeping cool during a heatwave in Melbourne, Australia. The species suffers perhaps more heat stress than an any other native animal species, with dozens dying whenever temperatures hit the high-30s on consecutive days. However, flying along the Yarra river helps them keep cool Photograph: Newspix/Rex Features Anemones and barnacles thriving near the hot vents of the Southern Ocean, Antarctica, where a number of new species – including the hairy-chested yeti crab – were revealed this week Photograph: NERC CHESSO Consortium/Oxford University A monkey on a young boy's shoulder during an eviction from Uruguay Square in Asuncion, Paraguay. A large group of the Ava Guarani ethnic group have been occupying the square for the past seven months, demanding the right to land Photograph: Jorge Saenz/AP