It’s been a cool, extraordinarily wet spring in the Ozarks, and tree buds are just now starting to open up. Nevertheless, the southern breeding warblers are mostly in place; I personally had eight warbler species including Ovenbird, redstart, parula, yellow-throated, Kentucky, and Pine Warbler during the morning. Boreal breeders like Chestnut-sided Warbler haven’t quite started coming through yet.

Greg Swick tries to point out a Hermit Thrush for a crowd of eager observers. (Greg has posted his own account of the day: Red Bridge Round Up.) It was fun to see my old friends again. They call me a world traveler (which, I suppose, is true) and like to joke that they taught me everything I know (which is probably truer than they realize).

Lovely spring wildflowers bloomed among the rocks and trees. This is rue anemone.

And this is Trillium sessile (which I think sounds nicer than “toadshade”). Sessile means without a stalk, and as you can see, both the flower and the leaflets lack appreciable stalks and are nestled together. More wildflower photos are available in today’s gallery: Ozarks wildflowers.

On the first morning, I awoke to this — the Resplendent Quetzal — shimmering blue-green in the cool light of dawn. What a bird, easily among the most spectacular in all the world. It has lived in legend for centuries, since at least the time of the Aztecs. Absolutely magnificent.

The key to finding many of the passerine species is watching and listening for mixed flocks foraging in the vegetation. The flocks are often composed primarily of Yellow-thighed Finches (shown here) and Sooty-capped Bush Tanagers, or just a couple of hundred feet lower down the valley, the similar Common Bush Tanager. Mixed in with these species are smaller numbers of warblers, wrens, tanagers, woodcreepers, and funariids.

Then there are the hummingbirds. Magnificent Hummingbirds are large and often look mostly black. But when the males turn toward you, they almost explode with colorful purple and green-blue hues. Little wonder that their specific epithet, fulgens, comes from a Latin word meaning “to flash” or “to shine.”

Green Violetears are abundant around the headquarters sugar water feeders. During confrontations, they can flare those purple face patches out sideways like ears!

At three inches long including the bill, Volcano Hummingbirds are the tiniest bird I’ve ever seen. They’re hardly bigger than a good-sized bumblebee. There are three races in Costa Rica; the one here has a very subdued greenish-gray gorget, as seen in the photo.

Torrent Tyrannulets live along the fast-moving mountain rivers, fluttering moth-like over the water in pursuit of small insects. They are similar in coloration and ecology to the Torrent Flyrobins I observed in Papua New Guinea. I supposed the coloration is advantageous against the rippling water.

Moisture abounds in the cloud forest, and virtually every surface is covered with epiphytic mosses, lichens, orchids, bromeliads, ferns, and liverworts. Ochraceous Wrens, Buffy Tuftedcheeks, and many other species probe the vegetation in search of prey. It’s a soft, soggy, and intricate world.

Copious amounts of water allow moisture-loving plants like this filmy fern to thrive.

And there are beautiful flowers, like this begonia, that we may recognize from our gardens. But this is their home, where they flourish and thrive.

Orchids seem to grow fairly high up as epiphytes on limbs and trunks. I saw three or four species in bloom, but they were a bit difficult to photograph.

Are you still reading? Good. I could keep going and going, but I think I’d better point you off to my photo gallery if you’re still hungry for more. I’ve posted almost 90 photos — there are more quetzals, more hummingbirds, other birds, botanical wonders from lichens to tree ferns to heliconias, scenic shots, and even a fish. So have a look, enjoy, and marvel: Savegre Mountain Lodge photos.

I’d been watching a pair of Finsch’s Parakeets (Crimson-fronted Parakeets), Aratinga finschi, clambering around the outside of the neighbor’s apartment this morning, when one bird flew over and landed right in front of me. Wow!

This attractive, engaging parakeet is endemic to Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama, but it is a common city and suburban bird around San José.

This relative of the more northerly White-winged Dove is the bird of Lima, almost invariably present in trees, on sidewalks and roofs, and flying high overhead in flocks containing dozens of birds. Its bare orbital skin is an intense blue color, and unlike its cousin, its iris is dark.

I saw a rare rainfall on my third morning in Lima. Lima is in the Sechura Desert and in most months records its precipitation in fractions of a millimeter. As the water fell, doves all around the neighborhood extended their wings to let drops fall on their feathers, as I’d once seen a Mourning Dove do at home.

Eared Doves are also common in Lima, as they are throughout much of South America. The race in Lima is rather like Mourning Doves with shorter tails, different voices, and some plumage differences.

Vermilion Flycatchers are also fairly common in Lima. Some are brightly colored like the birds in the southern United States, but some birds (like this one) are all-dark sooty morphs.

Lima has two blackbirds — the Shiny Cowbird (female illustrated here) and the Scrub Blackbird. Female Shiny Cowbirds are easy to identify, but male cowbirds and Scrub Blackbirds are tricky at first. Scrub Blackbirds have longer bills and heads; cowbirds have shorter, more conical bills and a short, round head. There are other differences too, but the jizz is fairly easy to call with a few days’ practice.

Tiny Southern Beardless Tyrannulets win the cuteness award; they’re smaller than some hummingbirds.