An exquisitely illustrated, one-of-a-kind celebration of the hidden beauty of nature and the ingenuity of birds Susan Ogilvy started painting bird nests almost by accident. One day, while tidying up her garden after a storm, she found a chaffinch nest - a strange, sodden lump on the grass under a fir tree. She carried it inside and placed it on a newspaper; over the next few hours, as the water drained out of it, the sodden lump blossomed into a mossy jewel.

She was amazed, and dropped everything to make a painting of the nest at exact life size. This was the start of an...