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.

Moscow’s Red Square has seen its share of strange stuff over the centuries, from medieval public executions to artistic self-mutilations. But a giant Louis Vuitton suitcase took many Muscovites completely by surprise. The 9-meter high, 30-meter long building covered in iconic gold-on-brown pattern erected last week is to host a historic exhibition.

A group of costumed fans attend Comic-Con International at San Diego Convention Center on July 12, 2015 in San Diego, California. (Photo by Daniel Knighton/Getty Images)

Bloodthirsty by Thomas P. Peschak, Germany/South Africa — winner, Behaviour: birds. When rations run short on Wolf Island, in the remote northern Galápagos, the sharp-beaked ground finches become vampires. Their sitting targets are Nazca boobies and other large birds. The finches rely on a scant diet of seeds and insects, which regularly dries up, so they drink blood to survive. ‘I’ve seen more than half a dozen finches drinking from a single Nazca booby,’ says Tom. Rather than leave their nests the boobies tolerate the vampires, and the blood loss doesn’t seem to cause permanent harm. (Photo by Thomas P. Peschak/2018 Wildlife Photographer of the Year)

A worker at the Jabal Saraj cement factory poses for a photograph in Jabal Saraj, north of Kabul, Afghanistan April 19, 2016. In an area desperately short of industry and jobs, local workers hope that the relaunch of the plant in Jabal Saraj, built by Czech engineers in 1957 and closed down by the Taliban in 1995, can show that Afghanistan's shattered industry can climb back to its feet after decades of war and destruction. But the outdated state-owned plant some 75 kilometres outside Kabul also shows how far it has to go before that promise can be achieved and there are serious questions over whether it has a viable future unless a new, modern facility is built to replace it. (Photo by Ahmad Masood/Reuters)

“Pantsir-S1 (NATO reporting name SA-22 Greyhound) is a combined short to medium range surface-to-air missile and anti-aircraft artillery weapon system produced by KBP of Tula, Russia. The system is a further development of SA-19/SA-N-11 and represents the latest air defence technology by using phased-array radars for both target acquisition and tracking”. – Wikipedia

Photo: Test of the surface-to-air missile Pantsir-S rocket and gun system in the conditions of the Polar region on the range “Pemba” near Vorkuta, approximately on October 20 2012. According to the statement of military, during doctrines five cruise missiles from five were destroyed. (Photo by Alexey Reznichenko)