Week in wildlife in pictures: battling eagles, dancing swans and a fox in the box

Rangers at the Margalla Wildlife Rescue Center in Islamabad prepare to feed Neelo and Sultan, leopard cubs whose mother was killed. Leopard killings are soaring in Pakistan. Researchers from the World Wildlife Fund are warning of a drastic population decline. While leopards are sometimes killed for their valuable pelts, they say, most cases are acts of retaliation – triggered by attacks on people or, more frequently, their farm animals

Just a few of the 4,900 yellow-spotted river turtles that were released into the Igapó-Açu river, a tributary of the Amazon, Brazil, this month. The Federal University of Amazonas,which is leading the protection programme, has returned more than 70,000 turtles to the wild in a decade

A crane strikes a timeless pose on a water buffalo near the meeting of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in Basra, Iraq

A squirrel prepares to stash away an acorn at a park in Ankara, Turkey

One of four lynx illegally released in the Cairngorms, who were trapped in early January by the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland. The big cats were caught after they were spotted near Kingussie, and were taken into quarantine at Edinburgh Zoo, where one sadly died soon after. The remaining three are said to be doing well

A Mexican long-nosed bat hangs from agave flowers in Nuevo León, Mexico

Swans dance in the snow on Swan Lake in Rongcheng, China

Fox in the box … a Leyton fan stages a pitch invasion before the English FA Cup fourth round match between Leyton Orient and Manchester City at Gaughan Group Stadium, Brisbane Road, London, UK

A couple of white-tailed eagles fight off the coast near Vladivostok in Russia’s far east, near the border with North Korea

Home from home … Dicle, a stork that was treated after injury at the Dicle Wildlife Rescue and Rehabilitation Center in Diyarbakır, Turkey, has decided to stick around despite being released into the wild. The stork is now adapting to its new nest, specially built on a pole in the centre’s garden by veterinarians and students

Dangerous game … a monkey plays on overhead electric power cables in the north-central town of Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka. A countrywide power outage last Sunday has been blamed on a monkey that clambered into a power station south of Colombo, leaving Sri Lankans sweltering in 30C heat

A Eurasian beaver in a protected wetland area in Věšín, Czech Republic. Beavers have saved Czech taxpayers about £1m as they stole a march on the state in creating a planned wetland before excavators got the green light. “It’s full service,” said a Czech conservationist. “Beavers are absolutely fantastic and when they are in an area where they can’t cause damage, they do a brilliant job”

A grasshopper clings to a kumquat tree in Los Angeles, US

Two rare black wolves have been spotted on camera crossing a stream in a Polish forest. The footage was taken last year, but only reviewed recently. Their black pelt is due to a melanistic mutation

A flamingo flaps its wings in the inner bay of İzmir, Turkey

Male red deer in Richmond Park, London, UK

A mandarin duck at the water’s edge in Dublin’s National Botanic Gardens, Ireland. Native to east Asia, mandarins were brought to Britain and Ireland from China in the middle of the 18th century. Some of them escaped or were released from wildfowl collections during the 1930s

A toque macaque carries her baby on the road in Habarana, Sri Lanka

A common silverline butterfly rests on a flower in New Delhi, India