Hummingbird migration by region

What this page is, and what it is not

This is a summary of typical regional windows, drawn from Audubon’s published guidance. It is useful for deciding when to hang and when to take down a feeder.

It is not live tracking data, and we are not going to present it as such. Real-time sighting maps exist and they are built from years of user-submitted reports — Hummingbird Central runs the best-known one. We have no sightings feed and no contributor network, so anything we published claiming to show where the birds are right now would be invented. If you want live sightings, go to a site that actually collects them.

What we can tell you accurately is the seasonal pattern, which is below.

East: Ruby-throated Hummingbird

One dominant species across the entire eastern half of the country, which makes the timing unusually clean.

• Gulf Coast: arrives in numbers by early March. Hang the feeder in late February.
• Southeast: March. Audubon suggests putting feeders out by early March here.
• Mid-Atlantic and Midwest: through April as the front moves north.
• Northeast and southern Canada: late April or early May. Audubon suggests hanging feeders by late April in the Northeast.

Departure runs in reverse through September and October, with the Gulf Coast latest — and with birds from further north passing through after your local breeders have gone. When to take feeders down.

Mountain West

More species and a longer window. Broad-tailed, Black-chinned and Calliope hummingbirds appear in yards near the Mexican border starting in early March, and are found in the northern Rockies by early to mid May.

Audubon notes a genuine conservation concern here: climate change and earlier wildflower blooming may be affecting these species, because they do not appear to be shifting their arrival times to match the earlier blossoming. A well-maintained feeder is a small buffer against that mismatch — which is an argument for hanging early and keeping it clean rather than for anything more elaborate.

West Coast

The most distinctive region, and the one where the usual advice does not apply.

• Rufous Hummingbird: moving north early — as far north as Oregon by the end of February, heading for Alaskan breeding grounds. If you are on the Pacific Northwest coast, hang your feeder in mid February.
• Anna’s and Allen’s Hummingbirds: year-round residents. There is no season to time — there is just a feeder that needs to stay clean and full all year.

For year-round feeding the cleaning discipline matters more, not less, because there is no off-season reset. A feeder that comes apart in two pieces is the difference between a sustainable routine and one that lapses in November. Easiest feeders to clean.

Southwest and Texas

Species-dependent and genuinely variable — several species overlap, some winter locally, and arrival can start as early as anywhere in the country near the Mexican border in early March. The practical rule here is to watch rather than to follow a calendar: hang the feeder in late February and take it down two weeks after your last bird, whenever that turns out to be.

The rule that works everywhere

If you only remember one thing: hang it a week or two before your region’s usual arrival, and take it down two weeks after your last sighting. Both errors are asymmetric — early and late cost you almost nothing, while being late in spring or early in fall costs a bird a meal at the two points in the year when it most needs one.

Spring timing in detail · fall timing in detail.