DIVERSIONS : The Desert in Bloom : Springtime: The Anza-Borrego Desert is sprouting with new life that is attracting carloads of flower buffs.

Campground reservations are filling fast.

Snowbirds from Canada are figuring ways to stretch their winter vacations.

Flower buffs all over America are scheming to take their Easter vacations a few weeks early.

And parents are wondering how to pull the kids out of school. After all, it is educational.

What is this event that has planners in a frenzy?

Springtime in the Anza Borrego Desert.

After several so-so years, all signs point to the wildflower show of the decade:

* Whole hillsides covered with dazzling yellow brittle bush.

* Miles of spindly ocotillo scattered across the desert floor, the tall stalks green and dripping crimson flowers.

* Stubby cacti concentrating their all in a few huge blossoms that range from delicate pink to yellow, salmon and luminous deep reds.

* The unbelievably intense blue flowers of the indigo bush and the restrained blue-violet blossoms of the aromatic lavender bush.

* Whole fields of star-faced white lilies.

* Even rare flowers, not seen in 40 years, are popping up in strange places when rainfall and temperature patterns have been just right.

Of course, anything that depends on the weather is chancy. A last-minute storm or hot spell could cancel the whole performance, reducing your trip to an impromptu study of desert history and geology.

So far, though, the rains have come at just the right time and in just the right amounts. Last month’s big storms brought welcome showers, so the ground has been--at least by desert standards--well soaked, which means plant roots will have something to draw on for several weeks as they strain to prolong their display.

Since Anza-Borrego is in the low desert, it is usually the first of California’s big desert parks to awaken in the spring. Flowers at Joshua Tree National Monument, in the high desert just to the north, usually emerge several weeks later. So your chances of seeing a great display of flowers somewhere in the desert seem pretty good, all the way through Easter.

But don’t forget that spring also brings out the desert critters.

At Yaqui Well--the historic water hole near the Tamarisk Grove campground--every mistletoe-laden mesquite bush and ironwood tree seems to have its own shiny black phainopepla perched in the top branches like a weathercock. How the birds keep so immaculate while feeding on those sticky seeds is something wearers of soup-stained neckties would love to understand.

Listen to these pointy-headed birds’ “come-hither” whistle, which is just a territorial call. As for the sinister red eye, that’s the result of a lack of eye pigmentation.

The tiny Costa’s hummingbird, with its iridescent violet bib, is as lovely as any of the flowers it feeds on. Imagine it perched against a background of yellow mesquite. Even the goldfinch and the house finch seem to be more brilliantly colored in the desert.

Isn’t there something bravely silly about the road runner, scuttling across the hot desert floor when it’s perfectly capable of flying?

And the raucous cactus wren, daring the world to approach its nest in the depths of a spiny “jumping” cholla. The cholla’s barbed spines just seem to jump at you--like a porcupine just seems to be throwing its quills. Rest assured, if you touch the cholla, you’ll jump. Even the teddy-bear cholla isn’t worthy of being cuddled. Stick to taking pictures.

The dove call that seems to have the emphasis on the wrong syllable is the call of the white-winged dove, similar in appearance to a mourning dove, but with white shoulder patches and a white band across its broader tail.

The desert is a place of reptiles--lizards, chubby chuckwallas and an occasional rattlesnake--but it’s also home to fish.

Yes, fish. Perhaps the most famous of them is the tiny desert pupfish, which is as endangered as it is inconspicuous.

A population of pupfish is maintained for education and research purposes in a small pond in front of the park’s visitors’ center, which all by itself, is worth a visit.

Constructed of brown desert stone, the center is set in a hillside, its roof covered with the same sand as the surrounding desert and planted with native desert plants. The “yard” in front, surrounding the pupfish pond, is also a native plant garden.

All feeling of the primitive is abandoned, however, at the great carved doors with their massive bronze handles in the shape of the native bighorn sheep. Inside the center, a slide show orients you to the desert as well as state-of-the-art exhibits on the desert’s flora and fauna, history and the environmental problems it faces.

There’s even an earthquake machine that simulates the terrifying sensation.

The visitor center was developed through the efforts of the Anza-Borrego Desert Natural History Assn., a volunteer organization formed more than 20 years ago to assist in the interpretive and educational programs of the huge state park, which has 700 miles of vehicle trails. (Some of the more remote areas require four-wheel drive vehicles.)

But if you want to do the desert right, try walking or hiking on a volunteer-led tour.

After all, how many birds can you hear and flowers can you smell from a car?

Anza-Borrego Desert State Park is about 60 miles east of San Diego, on Highway 78. For information: (619) 767-5311 or (619) 767-4205.