Jul 26, 2026
Anna's Hummingbird: Range & Expansion
Most range maps show a fixed shape. Here's where the bird lives, here's where it doesn't, end of story.
Anna's Hummingbird doesn't work that way. Draw its range map in 1900 and you'd get a thin ribbon of California coast — a few hundred miles from northern Baja up to San Francisco Bay, and that was the entire world population of the species. Draw it today and it reaches Vancouver Island, southeastern Alaska, Idaho, Arizona, and West Texas.
Nothing about that is normal. This is a bird that doesn't migrate — no seasonal route, no annual round trip. What moved was the range itself, crawling north and east across a century and never once retreating. And it hasn't stopped: in Idaho, you can still watch it happening year by year.
Here's where Anna's lives now, and how it got there.
Where Anna's Hummingbird Lives Today
Where Anna's Hummingbird lives today — the result of a hundred-year expansion that hasn't stopped. States are colored by birding region. Below: how it got here, state by state.
Why a Non-Migratory Bird Moved 700 Miles North
The short version: people did it, mostly by accident. A 2019 study in The American Naturalist traced a century of Christmas Bird Count records and concluded the expansion reflects "a mix of introduced plants, human facilitation, and phenological acclimation." Californians planted enormous quantities of eucalyptus, which blooms straight through winter when native nectar disappears. They hung feeders. And the birds themselves adjusted, delaying nesting by at least 16 days in the north to match a later spring. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game puts the result plainly: Anna's have pushed more than 700 kilometers north into British Columbia and Alaska, "and feeders are a big reason."
There's a lot more to that story — including genetic work showing Anna's hasn't actually adapted to northern winters so much as found a way around them. The full Anna's Hummingbird species guide covers the science →
A Century of Expansion, State by State
One hundred years, one direction. Anna's Hummingbird doesn't migrate — which makes this strange. It isn't a route flown each year. It's an entire species range that has crawled north and east across a century and never once gone back.
Every Anna's alive lived between northern Baja and San Francisco Bay. Then Californians planted eucalyptus — which blooms all winter — and hung feeders. The bird stopped needing to stay put.
CaliforniaAnna's reached coastal BC in the 1940s, leapfrogging past anything the species had occupied before. Breeding wasn't confirmed there until 1986 — but today it marks the northern limit of year-round hummingbird residency on Earth.
Anna's reached Seattle in 1964, and Washington's first nest followed near Tacoma in 1976. Oregon filled in over the same stretch. Within a generation the Pacific Northwest went from having no hummingbirds in winter to having one that never leaves — the single reason a Seattle feeder gets visitors in January.
Oregon WashingtonStill rare, but no longer accidental. Anna's now reaches Kodiak Island and shows up in the season that makes least sense — 21 were counted in Ketchikan on the December 2021 Christmas Bird Count, all at feeders.
AlaskaRare until the early 2000s. Before Boise State's Intermountain Bird Observatory began studying them in 2015, fewer than ten were reported statewide each year. The project now logs up to 200 a winter — and nesting in Boise as early as February.
IdahoArizona holds Anna's all year — though many move west to California after spring nesting and return in late summer, the closest thing this species has to real migration. Nevada and Utah catch the range only in their southern corners.
Arizona Nevada UtahHere the range behaves differently again — breathing eastward each cold season and contracting each spring. Records are increasing in both.
New Mexico TexasAbout 160 observations in the state's entire heritage database, nearly all in the west. Not a population — a scatter of records at the outer boundary of a hundred-year push.
MontanaOne thing the colors give away. Look at the first step and the fourth. California and Alaska are the same gold — both Pacific & West on our regional map. One of them held the entire world population of this species before 1900. The other didn't record its first Anna's Hummingbird until 1971. A single region spans the whole arc of the expansion: the place it started, and the place it's still arriving. If you keep a feeder in Ketchikan, you're on the frontier of something that began in a California chaparral a century before you were born.
What This Means If You Live on the Frontier
Most of this map is settled. California, Oregon, Washington, coastal British Columbia — Anna's is a fixture there now, and a feeder is simply part of the landscape.
Four places are different. In Idaho, Montana, Alaska, and the far inland edges of the Pacific Northwest, the range is still moving — and what happens in backyards there is part of the reason why.
A few things worth knowing if that's you:
- Feeders help — but they are not why the birds are there. This surprised us: the Intermountain Bird Observatory reports that Anna's "choose to stay in areas regardless of feeder presence," and many birds in their study were first spotted at homes with no feeder out at all. What feeders do, per a Project FeederWatch study, is help Anna's survive in places they otherwise couldn't. The bird decides to stay; you help it make it through. IBO has documented overwintering in Idaho and nesting in Boise as early as February.
- Keep it from freezing. IBO recommends heated feeders, a brooder heat lamp of the kind used for chickens, or a heated dog bowl under a saucer feeder. One caution from their team: these keep a feeder defrosted but cannot melt one that has already frozen — leave the heat on overnight, or bring the feeder in and set it back out before dawn. And once a bird has committed to your feeder, don't take it down until temperatures are above freezing.
- Report what you see. Frontier sightings are genuinely useful data. Idaho's picture changed from "fewer than ten a year" to "up to 200 a winter" largely because people started reporting. Submit to eBird, or to your state's observatory or records committee.
- Don't assume it's a mistake. A hummingbird at a Ketchikan feeder in December sounds impossible. Twenty-one of them were counted there on a single Christmas Bird Count in 2021.
The point of the timeline above is that none of those steps looked inevitable at the time. Someone in Seattle in 1964 saw a bird that wasn't supposed to be there. Someone in Boise in 1976 did too.
Anna's Hummingbird by Region
Anna's now touches four of the eight U.S. birding regions. Each regional guide covers arrival timing, the other species you'll see alongside it, and what to plant:
Is the Expansion Still Going?
Yes, though not evenly. Breeding Bird Survey data show Anna's increasing by over 2% per year between 1966 and 2019, with a global population now estimated at 9.6 million. But a 2021 analysis in Scientific Reports found the strongest growth is happening at the northern and western edges of the current range — not in California, where the species has been established longest and may be approaching capacity.
Which is another way of saying the interesting part of this map is the outside of it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where do Anna's Hummingbirds live?
Year-round along the Pacific Coast from Baja California north through California, Oregon, Washington, and coastal British Columbia, and inland through Arizona and southern Nevada. They reach southeastern Alaska as rare winter visitors, overwinter in parts of Idaho, and expand into New Mexico and West Texas seasonally each winter.
Are Anna's Hummingbirds still expanding their range?
Yes. Breeding Bird Survey data show the population increasing by over 2% per year from 1966 to 2019, and the fastest growth is at the northern and inland edges rather than in the California core. Idaho is the clearest live example — the species went from fewer than ten reported sightings a year before 2015 to as many as 200 observations each winter.
How far north do Anna's Hummingbirds live?
Coastal British Columbia, including Vancouver Island, is the northern limit of their year-round range — the northernmost year-round range of any hummingbird species in the world. Individual birds turn up farther north in southeastern Alaska and as far as Kodiak Island, but those are visitors rather than an established resident population.
Why did Anna's Hummingbird's range expand so dramatically?
Research points to three things working together: widely planted non-native ornamental trees, especially winter-blooming eucalyptus; human facilitation, including the rise of backyard feeders; and the birds' own adjustment of their nesting calendar in northern climates.
Do Anna's Hummingbirds migrate?
Mostly not. Most populations are year-round residents, which is what makes the range expansion so unusual — the birds didn't establish a migration route, the range itself moved. The exception is in parts of the desert Southwest, especially Arizona, where some birds shift west toward California after nesting and return in late summer.
Can I attract Anna's Hummingbirds if I live at the edge of their range?
Yes, and it matters more there than almost anywhere. Keep a clean feeder up through winter and protect it from freezing — in frontier states like Idaho and Montana and in southeastern Alaska, a reliable winter food source is part of what makes overwintering possible at all. Report what you see to eBird or your state observatory; frontier sightings are genuinely useful data.
At Pop's Birding, we believe every backyard — big or small — has room for a little more wonder. Explore our feeders, nectars, swings, and wildflower seed blends to start building your own hummingbird sanctuary today.
Bethany Sloan has served as General Manager of Pop's Birding since 2010, continuing the legacy of her grandfather, William "Pops" Sloan, inventor of the Original Hummingbird Swing. A lifelong hummingbird enthusiast, educator, and independent researcher, she leads the company's educational content, including its 50-State Hummingbird Guide series, Migration Guide and Hummingbird Learning Center. Bethany combines scientific research, regional migration data, and more than 16 years of hands-on experience to create trusted educational resources for bird enthusiasts across North America.
