Best Wildlife Photos of the Week

A shortlisted image for the Bird Photographer of the Year Award – an Alexandrine parakeet standing on a swallow nests, Chambal River, India.
Photograph: Georgina Steytler/BPOTY

A Mesosa curculionoides beetle on a tree. Nearly a fifth of 700 beetle species surveyed in Europe face extinction because the old, decaying trees they depend on have been cleared from forests, scientists have warned.
Photograph: Benoit Dodelin/IUCN/AFP/Getty Images

A yellow-eyed penguin recovers after a foot operation at the Dunedin Wildlife Hospital, based at Otago Polytechnic on the South Island of New Zealand. Numbers of the threatened penguin species continue to decline despite the work of conservation groups.
Photograph: Murdo Macleod for the Guardian

Three dolphins swim in the Bosphorus on a foggy evening in Karaköy district of Istanbul, Turkey.
Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Corpses of poisoned vultures are piled up in the Mbashene communal area in Mozambique. Conservationists say at least 87 critically endangered vultures have died after consuming poison planted in the carcass of a poached elephant.
Photograph: Andre Botha/AP