Photographer Sharon Beals hopes her pictures of nests will invite viewers to start learning about the lives of nests' builders, and to take measures to help birds in any way they can.
Image: Sharon Beals
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The Nest Series
Photographer Sharon Beals hopes her pictures of nests will invite viewers to start learning about the lives of the nests' builders, and to take measures to help birds in any way they can.
Image: Sharon Beals
Golden-winged Warbler: The Cornell University Museum of Vertebrates
These neotropical migrants breed in the shrub lands, disturbed forests, and abandoned farmlands of eastern North America. Females lay a foundation of leaves and weave a loose inner cup of vines, strips of bark, or other plant materials. Densely replanted reforestation, fire suppression, the loss of farmlands are all factors contributing to their 'Threatened' status.
Image: Sharon Beals
Social Flycatcher: The Western Foundation of Vertebrate Zoology
Egret feathers camouflage this grassy dome-shaped nest built by a female Social Flycatcher. Recent immigrants to the Rio Grande Valley, their range extends to Paraguay. They attach their nests to bushes, trees, vines, and dead branches, and often over water on tree snags and pilings. They also adopt abandoned houses, bridges, signposts, utility poles, and even railroad trestles.
Image: Sharon Beals
Altamira Oriole: The Western Foundation of Vertebrate Zoology
Relatives of blackbirds and meadowlarks, Altamira Orioles can be found from the Rio Grande to Nicaragua, living in year-round territories as life-long pairs. It can take the female a month to weave a pendulous nest, which is entered from the top, with a nesting chamber at the bottom. In Texas, Altamira Orioles are considered a threatened species due to the loss of the native trees.
Image: Sharon Beals
Common Tailorbirds: Museum of Vertebrate Zoology
Tailorbird nests, constructed on tea leaves, from Sri Lanka.
Image: Sharon Beals
Hoary Redpoll: Museum of Vertebrate Zoology
These tiny seedeaters survive -80°F Arctic temperatures by doubling their weight in down in winter, and living off of plants not buried under the snow. Using a pouch in their esophagus, they can store seeds to be regurgitated and eaten under shelter. They also build well-insulated nests lined with willow cotton, caribou hair, vole fur, feathers, fine grass, and in this case, even sheep’s wool.
Image: Sharon Beals
Great-tailed Grackle: The Western Foundation of Vertebrate Zoology
The grackles need suitable cover in trees or other foliage for nesting, and water for drinking, bathing, and finding aquatic prey. Females fasten their cup-shaped nests to vertical twigs, weaving the outer cup with coarse grasses, weeds, bark strips, reeds, leaves, vines, feathers, paper, ribbon, fabric, or plastic. They cement the inner cup with mud or cow dung and line it with finer grasses.
Image: Sharon Beals
Brown Booby: The Western Foundation of Vertebrate Zoology
The Brown Booby builds a nest in a scrape on the ground. The nest materials will often include the bones and bodies of other birds, including Sooty Tern chicks.
Image: Sharon Beals
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San Francisco-based photographer Sharon Beals photographed all of the nests in the above gallery from historic ornithology collections housed by the California Academy of Sciences, the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, the Western Foundation of Vertebrate Zoology, the Cornell University Museum of Vertebrates, and the National Museum of Natural History at the Smithsonian.
"Threaded through his essays about migration, which for many species of bird is an arduous, instinct-driven, thousands-of-miles journey, are stories of the survival challenges that [are faced by] many species of birds along the way, challenges most often created by humans," Beals explains.
Beals is currently working on a series of photographs of the nests of extinct and endangered species.
"It is my hope," she says, "that my images of these avian architectural feats will invite viewers who might never pick up a pair of binoculars, or open a birding guide, to learn about the lives of their builders, and take measures to help birds in any way they can."