April is the Cruelest Month

A mostly sunny week with strong cold winds, temperatures dropping into the 20s at night, and fresh snow down to ~4200 feet on night.

Week in Review

While it feels like persistent cold temperatures and chilly winds may be dampening the rush into spring, there's still plenty going on. To my eye, this is especially noticeable in the many groups of white-crowned sparrows and yellow-rumped warblers migrating through the valley.

In fact, on a walk at the end of the week, it felt like there were endless parades of yellow-rumped warblers flitting across the landscape like flakes of confetti.

Yellow-rumped warblers and white-crowned sparrows are some of our most conspicuous early migrants, but they are far from the only birds migrating right now. For example, I've spotted several large groups of turkey vultures heading north, taking advantage of updrafts as the ground warms.

And beyond the birds, it's thrilling to see the impossibly green leaves of cottonwoods and aspens finally popping out. In the right light, it almost hurts to look at these trees!

Flowers continue to carpet hillsides around the valley, with balsamroot just coming into their full splendor, and the ground covered in countless blue-eyed mary and slender phlox.

Alongside emerging flowers and new leaves, you might be noticing a growing variety of insects. Seeing how many kinds of insects you can find on a walk make any spring day a delight!

Finally, large groups of mule deer are still being spotted around the valley, and there was even a report of a muskrat this week, an animal I've rarely seen in the valley.

Observation of the Week: Cameron Lake Road

There are many fascinating areas to explore beyond the Methow Valley, but one overlooked jewel is Cameron Lake Road on the Colville Nation. This wild, remote drive is popular with birdwatchers, especially during migration and in the winter. I finally decided to check it out after hearing a report of 1000 sandhill cranes last week and I was blown away by this drive.

Cameron Lake Road is about 30 miles long, of which 20 miles are on a well-maintained gravel surface, and the road climbs eastward out of Omak onto a high plateau then drops back down to the highway near the mouth of the Okanogan River.

This fascinating plateau is sprinkled with at least a hundred lakes and marshes attracting huge numbers of migrating ducks. And while the lakes were awesome, what I fell in love with was the vast, open feeling of this place.

Not only was it incredibly calming and healing, but over the course of hours we saw only two vehicles on the entire drive.

It's definitely worth making this drive, but I'd go soon, while there are still ducks on the lakes and flowers on the hillsides!