Staff Picks Blog
I love to select books for the new nonfiction display shelves for so many reasons. The books are new, the cover art on many of the books is remarkable and the books are about every subject imaginable, truly. I found a book tonight that just cried out to be picked up and opened. Nest is a visually stunning work. Beals uses birds and nests from three collections – the California Academy of Sciences, the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at UC Berkely and the Western Foundation of Vertebrate Zoology. Beals places the eggs in or near the nest and photographs them. Each photograph is set against a stark black background making the photographs all the more stunning.
Each photograph in Nest is accompanied by a page of informative text and a detailed ornithological illustration. The book is spectacular. It will make you look at the nests in you see in trees and the eggs that sometimes fall to the ground in spring with different eyes. I did a search of for more on Beals work and found an even larger collection in Flickr. If you enjoyed her work in Nest you will want to see these photographs too.
