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.

Young Muslim worshippers stand in the rain at the shrine of the 12th-century Sunni cleric Abdul Qadir al-Jilani (Gilani) in Baghdad as people gather to perform the prayers for Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of the Muslim holy fasting month of Ramadan, as observed locally on March 31, 2025. (Photo by Ahmad Al-Rubaye/AFP Photo)

A person lights fire crackers during the celebrations of Mawlid al-Nabi, the birth anniversary of Prophet Muhammad, in Hyderabad, Pakistan, 04 September 2025. Mawlid is observed on the 12th day of Rabi al-Awwal (the third month of the Islamic calendar) in Sunni Islam and on the 17th day in Shiite Islam. (Photo by Nadeem Khawar/EPA)

Pfc. Remy Bouchard swaps a cigarette for an egg with a French Orphan near La Haye Du Puits, France on July 18, 1944, which was captured by American forces. The boy is only twelve years old. (Photo by Hugh Broderick/AP Photo)

Arctic treasure by Sergey Gorshkov (Russia). An arctic fox carries its egg trophy from a raid on a snow goose nest and heads for a suitable burial spot. Finalist 2017, Animal Portraits. (Photo by Sergey Gorshkov/2017 Wildlife Photographer of the Year)

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)