Mary Ann and I went to Mt. Ord on June 23, 2025. We left at about 7:15 for the 1.5 hour drive. It’s a nice cool spot when it gets hot in Phoenix. It was about 75 degrees there and 100+ in Phoenix. The elevation is 7000 ft. There is usually good birding there.
We made our first stop, as usual, at Forest Road (FR) 1688, and hiked ‘the loop’ (up the road to the ‘camping area’ and back down through the forest from there). The creek by the turn-off was dry, but the spring was running and the water tank it feeds was full.
From FR 1688 we drove to the parking area near the top, and hiked about halfway up the road to where the meadow is. In the spring, the meadow is full of purple thistle flowers, and attracts a lot of butterflies. This time of year all the flowers were gone. We saw some birds along this road e.g. Bewick’s Wren, Plumbeos Vireo, Painted Redstart, Blue-gray Gnatcatcher, Acorn Woodpecker. There was a flock of about six White-breasted Nuthatches flying around together. I haven’t seen that type of behavior in the nuthatches before. The only pictures we got there that were worth posting were of the Grace’s Warbler, which is always fun to see.
It was a nice, cool day in the mountains!
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Those are beautiful photos, Joe!