It’s a holiday here today — Labor Day, celebrated with many other countries on May 1 — a perfect time to reflect on the Bird Walk ten days ago at the Wilson Botanic Garden.

Plants always take center stage, especially in the Heliconia Garden.

Birds are busy now with nesting season activities: fighting, choosing, building, sitting, searching, ferrying and so forth. It’s hard to decide where to look! But our great guide Randall Jimenez Bourbon spotted Silver-throated Tanagers building a nest in the Pollinator Garden along with two species of euphonias doing the same.

Golden-olive Flycatchers build an impressive nest with a ‘retort’ shape you might remember from chemistry class. And quite close to the Golden-olives was a smaller nest that looked a bit like a Mistletoe Tyrannulet’s construction.

Outside the dining room is a Bottle brush tree that seems to always have one of Costa Rica’s most beautiful hummingbirds guarding it at this time of year: the White-necked Jacobin.

And we end our tour with the most amazing moth, Thysania agrippina, also called the White Witch moth. It has the longest wingspan of any moth and the best camouflage ever.