This is a bearded tit bird, diving for food. Photo by Edwin Kats.

The battle by Jose Garcia, US. Category: bird behaviour. A great white heron (Ardea herodias occidentalis) fighting a green snake in the Florida Everglades. The fight lasted for nearly 20 minutes with the heron having to release its prey. (Photo by Jose Garcia/2017 Bird Photographer of the Year Awards)

Creative imagery, gold winner: Sprats and Bread, Ruediger Schulz, Germany. (Photo by Ruediger Schulz/2021 Bird Photographer of the Year)

Zoo keeper Ross Poulter holds a White's Tree Frog in Edinburgh Zoo's new tropical forest zone on September 9, 2011 in Edinburgh, Scotland. The Brilliant Birds Exhibit which brings together beautiful and rare birds from all over the world is now more colourful and unusual, with the unveiling of the zoo's new tropical forest zone bringing together a collection of vertebrates, invertebrates and amphibians for the very first time. (Photo by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)

An installation consisting of a series of bird boxes is displayed in a tree in Duncan Terrace Gardens in Islington on March 24, 2011 in London, England. The boxes by artists Bruce Gilchrist and Jo Joelson of “London Fieldworks”, were designed to reflect the architecture of the Georgian terraces and flats that surround the park in the community gardens. (Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

Migrating gray cranes, on November 30, 2009 around the Hula Lakes in northern Israel. (Photo by Uriel Sinai/Getty Images)

Sharon Beals is a San Francisco based photographer who has photographed nest and eggs specimens collected over the last two centuries at The California Academy of Sciences, The Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, and The Western Foundation of Vertebrate Zoology. While few nests are collected today, these nests and eggs are used for research, providing important information about their builder’s habitats, DNA, diseases and other survival issues.

The Atlantic Puffin is definitely a curious-looking bird. The special coloring that this bird develops for the breeding season in the spring is very reminiscent of tropical birds. The bright colors of the beak and the markings around the eyes serve no particular advantage and have evolved as a result of sexual selection. However, Puffins don’t look that pretty all year round. They shed all these festive colors in partial moult after the breeding season is over. They lose the ornaments around their eyes, their face becomes darker, and their beak becomes very different. The natural habitat of these birds is the cold waters of the North Atlantic Ocean.