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.