Beautiful but so difficult to see well — that’s what you could say about many of the mobile and wary birds that share our planet. And you could say the same about the well-hidden, frequently camouflaged nests in which birds lay and protect their eggs.
How often we’ve wished for a way to study them, to marvel at their fragility and ingenuity, without disturbing the important work that takes place in them. That’s why we were delighted by Nests: Fifty Nests and the Birds That Built Them by San Francisco photographer Sharon Beals. Her tack-sharp images make artwork of even the slightest nest.
I talked with Beals recently. An excerpt of our conversation will appear in the December 2011 issue of BirdWatching. The cover of her book, showing the well-lined nest of a Hoary Redpoll, is at right. The entire interview follows. --Chuck Hagner, Editor
BirdWatching: Where did the idea for the book come from?
Beals: The idea evolved over a 10-year trajectory that began after reading Scott Weidensaul's amazing book Living on the Wind: Across the Hemisphere with Migratory Birds (North Point Press, 2000). Besides explaining how birds manage to find their way -- navigating by stars, magnetic fields, polarized light, or even what might be some inherited instinct -- he also talks about what they encounter along the way, and at either end of these journeys.
And as most of your readers may already know, migratory hazards and habitat loss are affecting so many birds around the world. I had already been interested in native plants and habitat restoration, but this book was the inspiration to learn as much as I could about what birds need to survive and about what I do in my own life that affects the welfare of birds, even at a distance.
BirdWatching: What made you ask, in 2007, to see the collection of nests and eggs at the California Academy of Sciences, as Assistant Curator and Department Chair Jack Dumbacher and Collections Manager Maureen Flannery write in the foreword?
Beals: I wanted to share what I was learning, and to reach a larger audience than the already-converted choir of birders and native-plant aficionados. How to do that with my skill and artistry eluded me. It was only after photo-ing some of a friend's innocently but, as it turned out, illegally collected nests (now either returned to the wild or donated to the Academy for use in nature education) that I felt that I had found a subject matter that would engage a wider public and, hopefully, engender their interest in birds. That was, if I could do a book -- which is why I approached Moe and Jack about photographing the nests at the California Academy of Sciences.
This wonderful opportunity -- working in a storage area in the temporary location while the Academy was being rebuilt, surrounded by skulls of long-horned megafauna and in the company of a giant (mounted) Kodiak bear -- was a dream come true. It was also where I gave myself a crash course in avian taxonomic order, so I could find the eggs that were collected with the nests as efficiently as possible. Eventually, I got to continue work on the project in the collections of the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Western Foundation of Vertebrate Zoology in Camarillo, both of which have amazingly beautiful nests.
BirdWatching: I enjoyed Scott Weidensaul's introduction to the book. Did you ask him to write about the nests the Chipping Sparrows made with his mother's hair? Did you expect him to write something so lovely?
Beals: I am so glad you asked about Scott's introduction. What a gift to the book it is! And as you can imagine, when I first read it, his words made me weep. I had given him no direction -- who would tell such a great writer what to write? I had no idea that it would be so personal and beautiful. Like his writing in Living on the Wind, he instructs not just by fact but also by well-told, firsthand observation. I think it is the most beautiful piece of writing in the book, and reason enough for it to be on everyone's bookshelf. Oh, I have to mention, when it comes to beautiful prose, Mimi White's poem “Field Notes” (page 5) says so perfectly what I feel when the sight of a bird in flight takes me out of myself and into a moment of wonder. (Mimi White's poem appears in the collection The Last Island. Read a review.)
At right: Beals's photo of a Western Tanager's nest.
BirdWatching: Nineteen of the 50 nests in the book were made by birds that don't breed in North America. Why?
Beals: I wanted to find the nests of as many birds as I could, from as wide a range of both species and countries as I could, and, whenever I could find them, the nests of birds whose conservation status was Endangered or Threatened. While I do have some redundancies of families, these were the nests of species of birds that called different parts of the world home. I would have loved to include even more families and countries, but I’m not a scientist, so I wasn't granted access to some of the major collections. That may have changed; I have been invited to visit Cornell and will do so, hopefully in the next year.
BirdWatching: Are nests more of scientific or artistic interest to you?
Beals: I would say that the nests first spoke to me artistically, since sticks and twigs are in my preferred color palate, but I think that attraction has an element of science in it. I don't think that, for some of us artists (and hopefully viewers), we can make that separation. Maybe it is because the nests are all about science, with remnants of a bird's habitat and their methods of construction, that we see them as an art form. I hope this isn't too confusing.
BirdWatching: You describe yourself as a "theoretical birder," not a lister. Please explain what you mean by this. Do you hope to turn your readers into theoretical birders?
Beals: I say this still, even though I have learned a lot since I began studying birds in earnest 10 years ago. I still have a very short, mostly regional life list, which I have never written down or actually counted. But by theoretical, I mean I have the interest of all birds at heart and am trying as best as I can to learn how I affect their survival, and to do what I can for them, either by planting my mini-native garden to feed the insects that feed the birds, weeding invasive plants on work parties in my urban parks, or learning where and how my produce is grown, what I am putting into the water supply and the ocean, and where my wood and paper products come from, and so much more.
And yes, thanks for asking, I do want as many people as possible to become theoretical birders, even if they don't pick up binoculars. I am grateful for having been able to do this book, and for the editors who let me say in my author statement much of what I have learned. There is more, of course, to learn and say, and I am sure many of your readers are already on this same path; hopefully, this will still engage them. Maybe they can pass the book, and its message, on.
BirdWatching: My gosh! What's all in that House Wren nest (page 69)?
Beals: As I learned about the breeding habits of House Wrens, I found that often when the older, stronger chicks fledge, the parents continue feeding and protecting the fledglings away from the nest. When they do this, they leave the weaker chicks behind. Their bones are visible in the photo. Like many birds, House Wrens produce a surfeit of eggs, increasing the odds that some will survive predation, weather, and any shortages of food, and as sad as this image might be to some readers, I am not worried about the status of House Wrens.
BirdWatching: Please describe how you made the photos. What equipment did you use? How did you light the nests? How did you create the black background?
Beals: When I worked in the collections, I would bring a set with a black cloth-like background, some strobe lights with a softbox, and whatever 39-megapixel camera I could get my hands on. I rented, borrowed from friends, and was loaned cameras by the Leaf reps (Leaf is a brand of camera back that fits onto Hasselblads, Fugis, and Mamiyas, much like a medium-format film back). I used this high-res equipment so that when it came to showing the work in art or museum shows, printed large, the nest materials and construction methods would be seen in exquisite detail.
I shot tethered (connected via a FireWire cable) to my laptop, so that I could see and shoot varied focal planes that I would later merge, using Photoshop, into one image with most everything in sharp focus. Maybe this is more than you wanted to know?
At right: a Pine Siskin's nest.
BirdWatching: I was surprised to see the photo of a Marbled Murrelet's nest (page 81). Not only had I never seen one before, I didn't know one was in a museum. Please describe what we see in the photo. Is it a section of a tree limb or the mossy covering from a tree limb? How did the nest come to be in the museum collection?
Beals: You are in fact seeing what Moe Flannery determined to be the only nest of a Marbled Murrelet in a museum collection.
A slice of a limb of a Douglas fir, it was found, accidentally, when a forester was trimming trees around a campsite in Big Basin Redwoods State Park in California. The year was 1974, and it was the nest that gave clues to researchers about what kind of habitat they might need.
What has been confirmed, after years of neck-straining study, is that Marbled Murrelets fly up to 25 miles inland to nest in trees 200 to 2,000 years old -- trees with limbs as thick as trees themselves, that are wide enough to serve as both a nest platform and a landing pad.
The nest is nothing more than a depression in the moss caused by the weight of the adults, both of which incubate the egg, changing shifts at dawn. The white at its edges is the guano from the chick that was found with the nest. I am assuming that this nest was donated to the Academy for its scientific value and its conservation. The egg I photographed at the Western Foundation of Vertebrate Zoology.
Read about Marbled Murrelet.
BirdWatching: Which nest in the book is your favorite? Why?
Beals: Ohhh, if this were an audio interview, you would hear a big sigh. It's so hard to choose a favorite. I love the deep woven cup of the Swainson's Thrush (page 99), because it is the nest of one of my favorite birds, whose song I know from my childhood -- but also because I felt like I was touching history. When I read the collection tag, I learned that this particular nest was collected by Joseph Grinnell, the scientist whose collections and field-research archives were the foundation of the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology.
I love the little Verdin nest as well (page 105), because it is such a defiant little fortress. But my heart also is moved not just by the fragile beauty of the little collection of gull feathers of the Bank Swallow's nest (page 25), but because I go and see them at Ocean Beach, San Francisco, every spring, when they return from their long migrations and start digging the tunnels to their new nest cavities. And I always return a few weeks later, when every tunnel entrance is filled with at least one, if not a few chicks, waiting for their parents to arrive with the next insect.
BirdWatching: I was struck by the string, paper, ribbon, plastic, and other detritus that birds incorporated into their nests (Common Rock Sparrow, Great-tailed Grackle, House Finch, House Wren, Western Kingbird). What do nests that contain human detritus tell us about the birds that constructed them? And about us humans?
Beals: I think, in short, that the birds are expeditious when it comes to the task of house building. Even the Greater Roadrunner nest (page 55), built in 1908, has a little scrap of burlap, a suitable substitute for a snakeskin, one of the regular ingredients of their nests. What a bonanza that sheep's wool must have been for that Western Kingbird (page 109)! Or the yarn and pheasant feathers for the Common Rock Sparrow (page 43), even back in 1938. Some of their choices might be, like bowerbirds, as mate attracting, or as pure fancy. I also read that hummingbirds will use blue paint chips in place of lichen; maybe like blue eggs, this is a camouflage that mimics the color of sky.
What I think it says about us humans is that we might be removing the natural materials that some birds would normally use to build nests, and our detritus might be the only options that they have to finish off a nest. Of course, many birds, like the House Finch (page 67 and at right), have only benefited by our alteration of habitats, thriving as we spread across the continent and famously using almost any object, from tin cans to cars, for a nest cavity and even nails as nest-building materials. While our leavings might be fanciful and useful nest ingredients for some birds, for others, pardon the obvious, they are serious hazards.
BirdWatching: Have you photographed more than the 50 nests that are included in the book? How many? What do you plan to do with the images?
Beals: I have photographed and processed (refined in Photoshop) about 100 nests. There are at least 20 that I still need to look at, but I think I have finished the most visually interesting constructions. I am getting invitations from nature preserves and science museums and a few galleries to show work, so maybe the other nests will have exposure there. I am more and more thinking of a sequel, and to work in other collections, but this has been a labor of love, and I will need to find some funding -- not to mention gathering the courage to take on writing another 50 essays.
It was a compelling but terrifying project, gleaning the text of over 150 species treatments and research papers to find the most interesting things I could about a bird, and then trying to parse what I was learning into something readable. Thankfully, I was given some very helpful 11th-hour editing help by very smart friends, and advised by ornithologists I met online who generously gave me opinions about behavior and taxonomic changes.
The response to the book has been such a relief, and so gratifying -- not just for the appreciation of the photographs, but also for the opportunity to have even a small voice in the conservation issues affecting birds. Right now I am working on an ocean plastic series, but it is more and more of a temptation to continue working on the nest series, maybe bird by bird.
Read more about photographer and author Sharon Beals.
Read more interviews with authors of notable books about birds (and trees):
Jonathan Alderfer
Richard Crossley
Kenn Kaufman
David Sibley
Don and Lillian Stokes