An employee collects eggs from inside a dead female sturgeon at the caviar fish farming company “Sturgeon”, the leading French producer, in Saint-Genis-de-Saintonge, France, November 8, 2016. (Photo by Regis Duvignau/Reuters)

A swan sits on her eggs on nest made of rubbish found in the Danube river in Belgrade, Serbia on Monday, May 10, 2022. (Photo by Darko Vojinovic/AP Photo)

A black-winged stilt patrols a reservoir in Jezreel Valley in Israel early April 2023. Their eggs are a golden colour mottled with brown. (Photo by Itamar Procaccia/Solent News)

An owner poses with her Maine Coon cat in front of a mirror during a cat exhibition in Bishkek on April 19, 2015. Cat lovers from Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan took part in the exhibition. (Photo by Vyacheslav Oseledko/AFP Photo)

Two Scottish shorthair cats dressed with red hats are pictured during a cat exhibition in Bishkek, on October 16, 2016. Cat lovers from Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan took part in the exhibition. (Photo by Vyacheslav Oseledko/AFP Photo)

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.

Dressed in folk costumes, young women decorate a tree with painted Easter eggs in Dombrad, Hungary, Monday, April 5, 2021. (Photo by Attila Balazs/MTI via AP Photo)

Shooting star by Tony Wu, US/Japan. Winner, underwater. The electrifying reproductive dance of a giant sea star. As the surrounding water filled with sperm and eggs from spawning sea stars, Wu faced several challenges. Stuck in a small, enclosed bay with only a macro lens for photographing small subjects, he backed up to squeeze the undulating sea star into his field of view. The dancing posture of spawning sea stars rising and swaying may help release eggs and sperm, or may help sweep the eggs and sperm into the currents where they fertilise together in the water. Kinko Bay, Japan. (Photo by Tony Wu/Wildlife Photographer of the Year)