Week in wildlife in pictures: a strolling pelican, a venomous newt and a psychedelic swamphen

An eastern water dragon, a species native to eastern Australia, basks on a bush track in Sydney. Although shy, the reptiles often set up home in suburban parks and botanical gardens. They grow to about two feet long

A duck swims in a pond among algae and leaves with the arrival of autumn, at Tiergarten park in Berlin, Germany

A squirrel gets a takeaway in the Skaryszewski park in Warsaw, Poland

A western swamphen emerges from the reeds in the meadows of the Kızılırmak delta, in Samsun, Turkey. The ancient Greeks and Romans kept these striking birds as decorative pets; they can be seen on frescoes found in the ruins of Pompeii

Grey seals and their pups enjoy the isolation of Inchkeith Island in the Firth of Forth, Scotland

A motorcyclist shares the road with a wild elephant in Habarana, central Sri Lanka

A coypu swims in a pond in Woippy, north-eastern France

A cheeky swan nabs a snack from a fisherman’s fishing platform on a dull, cloudy autumnal day in the Midlands, UK

An African penguin emerges from its burrow at the Boulders penguin colony, which is a popular tourist destination, in Simon’s Town, near Cape Town, South Africa. The International Union for Conservation of Nature has changed the status of the African penguin from endangered to critically endangered

A wood nuthatch feeds on the seeds of a common milkweed near Csobánka, north of Budapest, Hungary

Two white-lipped deer, or Thorold’s deer, in Dêgê county, eastern Tibet

A mare and her foal stand in the flooded Guadaíra river in Seville, Andalusia, Spain. Although Valencia was the worst-hit region in Spain’s recent floods, Andalusia also suffered damage, with one death

A rough-skinned newt crosses a country road on a rainy afternoon near Elkton in southwestern Oregon, US. These newts are particularly poisonous: their skin produces the same paralysing toxin as that made by famous by the pufferfish

Sunlight passes through the sail of a stranded Portuguese man-o’-war at sunrise along Front Beach, in Isle of Palms, South Carolina, US. Seasonal winds routinely blow the venomous siphonophores onshore from the passing Gulf Stream

A Balinese long-tailed macaque roaming free in the forest in Padangtegal, Bali, Indonesia

A pelican named Ndagabar (which means “pelican” in the local Wolof language) makes the rounds of the neighbourhood in the early hours in Saint-Louis, Senegal