California Hummingbird Season: A Month-by-Month Calendar

Timing derived from eBird data, 2016–2025 (sourced July 2026)

Most of the country puts hummingbird feeders away in October and gets them back out in April. California doesn't work like that. Here, the birds never really leave — and the busiest stretch of the nesting year happens while the rest of the country is watching snow fall.

The short answer: keep your feeder up all year almost everywhere in California — Anna's nest here from December through June, and resident Allen's never leave Southern California. Migratory Allen's return to the north coast in February, Rufous pass through from February to May, and the only real off-season is the high Sierra and eastern California, roughly April through September.

California's Hummingbird Season at a Glance

How often each species turns up on eBird checklists, week by week — statewide, 2016–2025.

The state's other four regular species run at a much smaller scale, so they get their own chart. All four peak in April, within three weeks of each other.

How often each species turns up on eBird checklists, week by week — statewide, 2016–2025.

Here's the whole year, month by month.

January

The nesting month nobody expects.

Why nesting season is the demanding one

It looks like terrible timing until you look at what's flowering. California's rains come in winter, and the native plants that respond to them — manzanita most of all — bloom from December onward. Anna's have timed their breeding to that food supply rather than to the calendar, so a feeder you keep up in January is feeding a bird that's raising young.

There's a wrinkle specific to hummingbirds. Most female birds build up a temporary calcium store in their bones, called medullary bone, and draw on it to make eggshell. Hummingbirds have very little of it, so a laying female has less in reserve. Researchers have seen nesting females eating wood ash and other mineral-rich materials, which they think helps replace the calcium that goes into eggs. In one 1994 study, every bird seen eating ash was a female tending a nest.

It's part of why Pop's Nectar includes calcium and electrolytes rather than sugar alone. Nesting females need extra calcium during egg-laying, and plain sugar water has essentially none. Read more on the research behind it.

Shop Nectarlyte® 8 oz →

What to do: Keep the feeder clean and full. If you're planting anything this year, plant a manzanita.

February

The coast wakes up.

March

Migration builds, and the desert has its moment.

What to do: If you've been meaning to visit Anza-Borrego or Joshua Tree, this is the window. Desert hummingbirds and desert wildflowers peak together.

April

The busiest month almost everywhere.

May

Allen's peak, and the desert empties.

What to do: Heat becomes the main issue now. Above 90°F, change nectar daily and move the feeder into shade — in the Central Valley and deserts that's the rule for the next four months.

Keep pests off without pesticides — hummingbirds rely on small insects for protein, so spraying near a feeder can cost them a food source, not just protect one.

AspenPerch®'s built-in ant moat blocks ants with a water barrier, and HummGuard® Nectar Tips keep bees and wasps out without changing anything for the birds — worth having ready as Central Valley and desert heat pushes both feeder traffic and insect activity higher over the next few months.

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Shop HummGuard® →

June

Settled, and quieter than you'd think.

July

The Rufous turn around.

What to do: If one bird is guarding your feeder, you're seeing exactly this kind of territorial behavior play out — and with Rufous newly back in the mix heading south through the mountains, it's a good month to fix it.

Seeing one bird chase everyone else off?

That's usually a resident claiming both the feeder and a nearby swing as its own guarded territory. A second feeder and a second swing, spaced out of sight of each other, gives another bird — Rufous heading south, or a displaced resident — its own station to guard instead of fighting over one.

Shop a second swing →

August

The southbound wave, and a festival worth the drive.

Rufous and Black-chinned are both fueling hard for the push south, and Anna's traffic is climbing too as the summer's fledglings crowd feeders ahead of their own late-September high.

This is the month to be generous, not economical.

Birds fueling for a long flight need feeders topped up more often — the large 2lb Nectarlyte® powder or the Nectarade® liquid concentrate keeps you from running out mid-surge.

Shop Nectarlyte® Powder 2 lb →

Shop Nectarade® Liquid 50.7 oz →

September

Anna's reach their yearly high.

October

The migrants finish, and the residents settle.

What to do: Leave the feeder up — this is the month people in other states put theirs away, and it's exactly the wrong move here.

This is the planting month.

Sow now and native wildflowers get the cold, moist period most varieties need to bloom reliably next spring.

Shop the Perfect Little Sanctuary® blend →

November

The year turns over.

December

Back to the beginning.

What to do: Nothing different — which is the point. In California the feeder just stays up, gets cleaned, and gets refilled, all year round. Our winter hummingbird feeder care guide covers heated feeders and the two-feeder swap.

The Year at a Glance

Frequently Asked Questions

A few of the timing questions we hear most from fellow hummingbird lovers across California:

When do hummingbirds arrive in California?

Timing varies by species and region: migratory Allen's return to the north coast in February, Rufous begin arriving in February and peak in early April, and Black-chinned arrive in the Central Valley from March into April. Anna's and Southern California's resident Allen's never leave, so there's no "arrival" for them at all.

When do hummingbirds leave California?

Rufous finish their spring passage by the end of May and reappear briefly moving south through the Sierra in July and August. Black-chinned and Calliope wind down by October. Anna's and resident Allen's in Southern California stay year-round.

Do I need to take my hummingbird feeder down for winter in California?

No, not in most of the state. Anna's are present every month of the year and begin nesting in December, so a feeder taken down in autumn removes food from birds about to breed. The one exception is the high Sierra and eastern California, where feeders can come down once the season ends around September.

When do hummingbirds nest in California?

Anna's nesting season runs from December through June, the earliest of any US hummingbird species, timed to California's winter rains and the bloom of native plants like manzanita.

What time of year are hummingbirds most abundant in California?

Late September, when Anna's reach their statewide yearly high, boosted by the summer's fledged young.

How We Built This Calendar

The month-by-month pattern on this page comes from ten years of eBird bar chart data for California — more than four million submitted checklists — pulled statewide and from six counties chosen to represent the state's range: Humboldt for the north coast, Alameda for the Bay Area, Sacramento for the Central Valley, San Diego for the south coast, Riverside for the deserts, and Mono for the eastern Sierra, covering 2016 through 2025, then cross-checked against California Department of Fish and Wildlife guidance, the California Bird Records Committee, and published research on Anna's and Allen's range expansions. Percentages throughout describe how often a species is reported on submitted checklists, not a count of how many birds there are.

Sources

• eBird bar chart data, Cornell Lab of Ornithology — California statewide plus Humboldt, Alameda, Sacramento, San Diego, Riverside and Mono counties, 2016–2025.
• California Department of Fish and Wildlife — species life-history accounts and breeding seasons.
• California Bird Records Committee — official state checklist.
• Calscape, California Native Plant Society — native plants and bloom seasons.
• Clark, C. J. (2017). eBird records show substantial growth of the Allen's Hummingbird population in urban Southern California. The Condor, 119(1), 122–130.
• Battey, C. J. (2019). Ecological release of the Anna's Hummingbird during a northern range expansion. The American Naturalist, 194(3), 306–315.
• des Lauriers, J. R. (1994). Hummingbirds eating ashes. The Auk, 111(3), 755–756. Documents five nesting female hummingbirds eating wood ash; no males were seen doing so in that study.
• Adam, M. D., & des Lauriers, J. R. (1998). Observations of hummingbirds ingesting mineral-rich compounds. Journal of Field Ornithology, 69, 257–261. Source for hummingbirds' greatly reduced medullary bone and for the mineral-rich materials they eat.
• Werning, S. (2018). Medullary bone is phylogenetically widespread and its skeletal distribution varies by taxon. Journal of Ornithology, 159, 527–543. Source for medullary bone being confirmed in hummingbirds.