Nests are more than homes: they are historical artifacts, objects of scientific analysis, and examples of nature's beauty--and all these modes are captured brilliantly by San Francisco-based photographer Sharon Beals, whose discovery of the collection at the California Academy of Sciences will excite bird lovers and inspire environmentalists and conservationists. Twigs, leaves, spider web and cocoon silk, plant down, mud, manmade materials like rope and yarn, feathers and fur, moss and lichen, are woven and spun intricately into baskets to protect the young, then placed in trees, burrows, shrubs, even human dwellings. Some of them are as mystifying as pieces of art, while others serve a practical purpose as decoys to lure would-be predators away from broods. Beals's artistic commentary serves as a lament for man's folly against nature almost as much as it does a document of some of nature's master architects. --Nancy Powell, freelance writer and technical consultant