Week in wildlife – in pictures

A seagull at Marazion near Penzance, Cornwall. Like many parts of the UK, Cornwall is enjoying milder weather after one of the harshest winters on record. Normally, due to the effects of the gulf stream, winters in Cornwall are among the warmest in the country, but this winter the gulf stream was diverted, leading to Arctic weather conditions Photograph: Matt Cardy/Getty Images A blue morpho butterfly sucks nectar from a banana in a newly opened butterfly garden at the National Museum, San Jose, United States Photograph: Juan Carlos Ulate/Reuters Plum blossom flowers dusted in snow at the Temple of Heaven, Beijing following the year's first snowfall. The Chinese capital had faced its longest wait for winter snowfall in 60 years as swathes of northern China endure the worst spell of drought since 1951. However, the snowfall was unlikely to signal the end of a severe dry spell that has sparked UN warnings about the impact on wheat crops Photograph: Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images The mountains of south-west China support a wide array of habitats and species , such as the red panda. They feed on the most species-rich river systems in Asia, including several branches of the Yangtze river, but its original habitat has been whittled away and only eight percent of it remains Photograph: Piotr Naskrecki/Conservation International A coot chick at the WWT Martin Mere Wetland Centre, Merseyside, England. The photo, by Robert Falcon, is one of the winning entries in the trust's national photography competition Photograph: Robert Falcon/WWT/PA Seagulls at the Bang Pu seaside resort in Samut Prakan province, Thailand. Every year between October to March thousands of seagulls migrate to Bang Pu from Siberia to escape the harsh winter Photograph: Rungroj Yongrit/EPA An elephant approaches a motorway near a willdlife preservation in Habarana, Sri Lanka. Asian elephants, which live to the age of 70, are increasingly straying into human settlements in search of food, as people encroach on their territory Photograph: ISHARA S.KODIKARA/AFP/Getty Images Frogs named Boophis tsilomaro (formerly Boophis occidentalis) in Madagascar. They were discovered by scientists around professor Miguel Vences, an expert on frogs who with a colleague has found and named about 100 types of the amphibian Photograph: Miguel Vences/TU Brunswick Handout/EPA Australian Institute Of Marine Science (AIMS) divers examine cores of large porites coral at Clerke Reef, western Australia. According to a study of coral cores that reveal a centuries-old climate record for the region, flood- and storm-battered northern Australia is likely to suffer more frequent weather extremes Photograph: HO/Reuters A golden silk spider hangs from a mango tree in Tangerang, Indonesia Photograph: Beawiharta/Reuters A sunbird drinks from a flower in Harare, Zimbabwe. The country has had good rainfall this year following years of poor harvests Photograph: Alexander Joe/AFP/Getty Images Rare black eagles search for food brought by a flash flood at the Tawi river in Jammu, north India. Swift environmental changes have seen numbers of the eagle fall sharply Photograph: Jaipal Singh/EPA A pride of rehabilitated lions rest beneath a rock outcrop at Lions Rock Lodge – a sanctuary for big cats and game animals near Bethlehem, some 350km south of Johannesburg. These lions were rescued by Four Paws, an organisation based in Vienna, Austria, dedicated to alleviating the suffering of mistreated animals Photograph: Jon Hrusa/EPA These Indian Star tortoises were found in a man's luggage at a Bangkok airport. Dozens of snakes, boxes of spiders and one of the world's rarest tortoises were among hundreds of live animals found in the luggage after the man went on a shopping spree at a Bangkok market Photograph: Traffic/AFP/Getty Images Monsoon clouds hang over an irrigation basin near the Uda Walawe wildlife sanctuary 170 km south-east of Colombo, Sri Lanka. Unusual weather patterns attributed to El Nino caused major floods in Sri Lanka last month. After a brief lull in the bad weather, rains again lashed down increasing the risk of landslides in the highlands and floods in the lowlands, and displacing more than 43,000 people Photograph: M.a.pushpa Kumara/EPA Whooper swans at dawn in Hokkaido, Japan. This photo earned Stefano Unterthiner, a National Geographic photographer based in Italy, second prize in the Nature Stories category of the World Press Photo contest Photograph: HO/Reuters