Jul 25, 2026
Alabama Hummingbird Season: A Month-by-Month Calendar
Alabama has two hummingbird stories running at once, and they're closer to complements than opposites. The Gulf Coast sees two real passage peaks a year — a spring push in April, and an even bigger one in September — with a genuine, if much thinner, wintering population holding on in between. Inland, around Birmingham and Huntsville, there's just one story: a single build that doesn't crest until September.
New to Alabama hummingbirds? This page is the timing deep dive. Two related guides cover the rest:
Free download
The whole year on one page
Arrival windows for the coast and inland, both Gulf Coast peaks, and when the winter visitors show up — sized 8.5" x 11" for easy reference and printing.
Download the Alabama cheat sheetOne page · PDF · free to print and share
Here's the whole year, month by month.
Regions used below
Coast — Mobile, Gulf Shores, and the Alabama Gulf Coast
Inland — Birmingham, Huntsville, Montgomery, and everywhere else
We checked Birmingham and Huntsville separately, expecting the north to run later. It doesn't — ten years of data put them on the same week. In Alabama the only meaningful divide is coast versus inland.
Alabama's Hummingbird Season at a Glance
One species nests in Alabama, and it dominates the warm months — Ruby-throated turns up on nearly half of all bird lists at its September peak.
How often Ruby-throated turns up on eBird checklists, week by week — statewide, 2016–2025.
Four more species turn up reliably enough to chart, but at a far smaller scale, so they get their own chart. Rufous is the one to watch for, peaking in mid-January long after the breeders have gone — Black-chinned, Buff-bellied, and Calliope Hummingbird are all real, documented winter visitors too, each with its own decade-plus banding record.
How often each species turns up on eBird checklists, week by week — statewide, 2016–2025.
January
Winter visitors on the coast. Nothing inland.
| Coast | Rufous peak for the year in the third week. Calliope and Black-chinned are both real, if thinner, possibilities too — and a few Ruby-throated linger. |
| Inland | Essentially zero. Not rare — absent. |
What to do: On the coast, keep a feeder up and clean. This is the month a wintering Rufous is most likely to be found, and most of them are only discovered because someone kept feeding. Inland, a winter feeder is a long shot.
February
The first arrivals reach the coast.
| Week 1 | Hang feeders on the Gulf Coast. |
| Week 3–4 | First Ruby-throated arrivals on the Coast — reporting rises clearly above the winter baseline and keeps climbing. |
| Inland | Still nothing. Another month to wait. |
Pop's tip: Put the feeder out before you expect birds, not after. Hummingbirds have exceptional spatial memory and return to reliable food sources year after year — and Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources notes that females often return to the very same place to nest. Being first in the neighborhood pays off for seasons.
March
Arrival month statewide, and nesting begins.
| Week 1 | Hang feeders inland. |
| Week 3 | First arrivals reach Birmingham and Huntsville — the same week for both. |
| Week 4 | Numbers jump sharply everywhere. The coast is already well ahead. |
| All month | Nesting season opens. Alabama's own wildlife agency puts egg-laying from March through July. |
What to do: Feeders up statewide. Watch for males chasing each other — territorial behavior is the first real sign the season has started, and the males arrive a week or so ahead of the females.
April
The coast's spring peak — real, but not its biggest of the year.
| Coast | Spring peak, cresting in the third week at roughly a quarter of checklists. Real and dramatic — but September's peak actually runs higher still. |
| Inland | Numbers climb steadily through the month as birds settle onto breeding territory. |
| Events | Two on the coast, back to back. Coastal Bird Banding at Fort Morgan is a free public banding week and one of the few stations in the country open to the public. Alabama Coastal BirdFest follows immediately after — four days of guided tours across Baldwin and Mobile counties, including hummingbird ecology workshops. |
Why nesting season is the demanding one
An Alabama female lays two eggs, incubates for about 16 days, and the young fly 20 to 22 days after hatching — then she keeps feeding them for days after that. Alabama's warm season is long enough that she may raise two or even three broods, which can mean most of the year spent nesting.
There's a wrinkle specific to hummingbirds. Most birds store calcium in medullary bone and draw on it while laying. Hummingbirds don't have it. A female building eggshell has to find calcium in real time, from a diet that's almost entirely nectar. Researchers have repeatedly documented nesting females eating wood ash, lime, and soil to get it — and never observed males doing the same.
What to do: Keep feeders full and clean, and skip the insecticide entirely. Nesting females need small insects and spiders for protein, and spider silk is what holds the nest together — Alabama nests are built from ferns, milkweed, young oak leaves and thistle, bound with spider silk or webbing from tent caterpillar nests.
May
The coast's passage birds move on. Inland doesn't.
| Coast | A sharp drop mid-month — reports fall to roughly a seventh of what they were two weeks earlier. Most of those April birds were passing through, not staying — but numbers don't hit zero; a real, smaller population remains all summer. |
| Inland | Steady and busy. Breeding in full swing. |
What to do: If you're on the coast, don't take a sudden quiet spell as the end of the season — it's a real drop, but not an ending. Heat also starts to matter now — above 90°F, change nectar every one to two days, and fill the feeder only as full as your birds will drink in a couple of days.
June
The coast's quietest stretch. Inland, the opposite.
| Coast | The low point of the season, though never fully empty. Relatively few hummingbirds nest on the immediate coast. |
| Inland | Busy and getting busier. Second broods are underway. |
What to do: This is the month the coast/inland split is most obvious — a Mobile feeder and a Birmingham feeder are having completely different summers. Keep both going.
July
Inland numbers take off. The coast starts rebuilding.
| Inland | Reports climb steeply as this year's young start flying and joining the adults at feeders. |
| Coast | Climbing steadily now — the real build toward September's bigger peak is underway. |
| All month | Last month of egg-laying. Late nests will still have young in them into August. |
What to do: Add a second feeder if you're seeing chasing. Hummingbirds defend food they can see all of, so two feeders placed out of sight of each other support far more birds than one.
Events: Alabama Audubon's Black Belt Birding Festival runs the first weekend in August, kicking off the evening of the last Friday in July in Greensboro. Guided field trips spread across eight Black Belt counties.
August
Inland approaches its peak. The coast is building toward an even bigger one.
| Inland | Hummingbirds on roughly half of all checklists by mid-month — above half around Birmingham, just under it around Huntsville — and still climbing. |
| Coast | Numbers building fast, already well past April's spring peak by month's end. The Fort Morgan staging season begins in late August. |
| Departures | Adult males start slipping south, often by late August — well ahead of females and young. |
What to do: Keep everything full. Birds on the coast are beginning to build fat for a Gulf crossing, and a reliable feeder in August matters more than one in April.
September
The biggest month of the year, everywhere in Alabama — including the coast's real annual peak.
| Inland | Peak. Around Birmingham, roughly two out of every three checklists record hummingbirds in the first week. |
| Coast | Peak in the third week — the coast's biggest week of the entire year, bigger than April's. Same window in which Fort Morgan researchers found autumn migration cresting. |
| Rufous | First coastal records of the winter start appearing. |
What to do: More feeders, filled more often. This is the month to be generous — and on the coast, the birds at your feeder are fuelling for up to 500 miles of open water.
October
The season closes fast.
| Inland | From about a quarter of checklists in week one to almost nothing by month's end. |
| Coast | Runs about a week behind. Stragglers into late October. |
| Planting | Prime wildflower sowing window opens. |
What to do: Sow the Perfect Little Sanctuary® blend in October or November, so the seed gets the cold, moist period most of the varieties need before spring.
Leave your feeder up. It's a myth that doing so delays migration — hummingbirds move on day length and instinct, not food supply. The last birds through are usually that summer's young, making the trip for the first time.
November
Inland closes. The coast switches species.
| Inland | Done. Take feeders down about two weeks after your last sighting. |
| Coast | Rufous become regular from late October onward and hold through the winter. Calliope Hummingbird's own real window is centered here too. |
What to do: On the coast, this is the moment to decide to keep going. Alabama's Gulf Coast hosts wintering hummingbirds every year — mostly Rufous, not Ruby-throated — and a maintained feeder is how most of them get found.
December
Winter residents only, and mainly on the coast.
| Coast | Rufous through the month, with Black-chinned and a few Ruby-throated alongside them. Buff-bellied is part of the same real Gulf Coast winter picture, documented by two separate decade-long banding studies, though it shows up more thinly on checklists than the others. |
| Inland | Nothing. |
What to do: If you're keeping a winter feeder, report what turns up. Winter hummingbirds on the Gulf Coast are of genuine research interest, and females and young often can't be named without a licensed bander measuring them in the hand.
The Year at a Glance
| When | What |
|---|---|
| Early February | Feeders up on the Gulf Coast |
| Late February | First coastal arrivals |
| Early March | Feeders up inland |
| Mid-to-late March | First inland arrivals — Birmingham and Huntsville the same week |
| March – July | Nesting season; two to three broods possible |
| April | Coastal spring peak (real, but smaller than September's); Fort Morgan public banding and Coastal BirdFest |
| First weekend in August | Black Belt Birding Festival |
| September | Peak month statewide — including the coast's biggest week of the year |
| October – November | Sow wildflower seed |
| Two weeks after your last sighting | Feeders down inland — on the coast, consider leaving one up all winter |
Frequently Asked Questions
When do hummingbirds come back to Alabama?
The Gulf Coast sees its first Ruby-throated in the second half of March, with numbers climbing hard into an April peak. Inland, Birmingham and Huntsville both get their first arrivals in the third week of March — the same week for both, which surprises people who expect Huntsville to run later.
When do hummingbirds leave Alabama?
Inland it ends fast: from about a quarter of all checklists in the first week of October to almost nothing by the end of the month. The coast runs roughly a week behind and tapers more gradually, since a small number of birds stay through winter.
Why is the Gulf Coast busy in April but inland isn't?
They're running different patterns. The coast gets a real spring passage peak as birds arrive off the Gulf, cresting in the third week of April — then an even bigger peak in September, as birds stage for the return crossing. Inland, April is just the start of one long build that doesn't crest until September.
Are there hummingbirds in Alabama in winter?
On the Gulf Coast, yes — hummingbirds are reported around Mobile every week of December, January and February, and most of them are Rufous rather than Ruby-throated. Black-chinned and Calliope are both real, documented winter visitors too, each backed by over a decade of banding records. Inland, winter records barely register.
What month has the most hummingbirds in Alabama?
September, statewide — and specifically for the coast, this is its single busiest week of the entire year, ahead of its own April peak. Around Birmingham roughly two out of every three checklists record a hummingbird in the first week; the coast peaks in the third week.
How We Built This Calendar
Every arrival, departure, and peak date on this page comes from ten years of citizen-science observation rather than from general guidance. We pulled eBird bar chart data for Alabama and for three counties chosen to represent each part of the state — Mobile for the Gulf Coast, Jefferson for central Alabama, Madison for the Tennessee Valley — covering 2016 through 2025, and read the arrival and departure weeks directly off the reporting rates.
A region's "first arrivals" week is the first week in which reporting rises clearly above the off-season baseline and keeps climbing — a rule designed to distinguish genuine new arrivals from the handful of birds that overwinter on the coast. Feeder dates are set two weeks ahead of that.
A genuine finding worth knowing: not every winter visitor behaves the same way, even among species that are equally real and accepted. A decade-long banding study (Bassett & Cubie 2009) measured actual year-over-year return rates for Alabama's wintering hummingbirds — whether the same individual bird came back to the same site in a later winter. Rufous returned 14.4% of the time, Buff-bellied 17.1%, Calliope 8.6%, Black-chinned 3.3%, Ruby-throated 5.2%. Anna's Hummingbird, also a real, accepted Alabama species, returned zero times out of three banded individuals — genuine evidence that Alabama's Anna's records are one-time wanderers, not a recurring population, which is exactly why it's named here rather than charted.
Percentages describe how often a species appears on birdwatchers' submitted sighting lists — a measure of how likely you are to encounter one, not a population count.
Sources
- eBird bar chart data, Cornell Lab of Ornithology — Alabama statewide plus Mobile, Jefferson, and Madison counties, 2016–2025. Source for all arrival, departure, peak, and species frequency figures.
- Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources — Ruby-throated Hummingbird species account. Source for nesting dates, clutch size, incubation and fledging periods, brood count, and nest materials.
- des Lauriers, J. R. (1994). Hummingbirds eating ashes. The Auk, 111(3), 755–756. Documents nesting female hummingbirds consuming calcium-rich wood ash; males were never observed doing so.
- Zenzal, T. J., & Moore, F. R. (2016). Stopover biology of Ruby-throated Hummingbirds (Archilochus colubris) during autumn migration. The Auk, 133(2), 237–250. Source for Fort Morgan autumn staging and passage timing.
- Bassett, F., & Cubie, D. (2009). Wintering hummingbirds in Alabama and Florida. Journal of Field Ornithology, 80(2), 154–162. Source for the winter-visitor species list and the year-over-year return-rate findings.
- Bassett, F., & Dietrich, C. (2021). Alabama and Florida wintering hummingbirds: a second decade of banding data, 2008–2018. Wilson Journal of Ornithology, 133(1), 132–136. Independent confirmation of the winter-visitor pattern a decade later.
- Alabama Audubon event calendar — source for festival and public banding dates.
Event dates and formats change from year to year — Coastal BirdFest moved from a fall date to spring in 2026, after more than two decades in the fall. Check organizer websites before making plans.
Know before they arrive
You don't have to keep this calendar taped to the fridge. Insider Birding Access members get seasonal notes timed to your region — when to have feeders out, what the birds are doing right now, and what's worth doing in your yard this season. Joining takes about thirty seconds, and there's 10% off your first order in it.
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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, Regional Guide, Species 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.
