In the winter of 1988, a female Xantus's Hummingbird — a bird that lives nowhere on Earth except the Baja California Peninsula — settled into a yard in Ventura, built a nest, and laid eggs. Twice. Neither clutch hatched, but the California Bird Records Committee accepted it as the state's first record, and it stayed the only one for thirty-six years. That's California in miniature: a state with more hummingbirds living here year-round than anywhere else in the country, and a coastline that occasionally hands you something that has no business being here at all.

Fourteen hummingbird species have been accepted to California's official state list. That ties Louisiana for the fourth-longest list in the country — behind only Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico — but the number that actually sets California apart is four: it's the only state with four species classified as year-round residents. Anna's, Allen's, and Costa's Hummingbirds are here in every month without qualification; Rufous earns the label more narrowly, breeding in the far north and overwintering in small, hard-to-confirm numbers in the south.

This page's job is identification and confidence — which hummingbirds you're actually looking at, and how sure you can be.

All 14 documented California hummingbird species, grouped by tier — statewide eBird data, 2016–2025, cross-checked against the California Bird Records Committee's own accepted-record history.

The Hummingbirds You're Most Likely to See

Anna's Hummingbird

The most common hummingbird in California by a wide margin, and the one you can count on in every month of the year. Anna's turns up on 46% of all California checklists at its late-September peak, and reaches 63% around Sacramento — the highest single-region figure anywhere in the state. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife's life-history account describes it simply as "mostly a resident year-round in the state," and that understates how deeply this bird belongs here: Birds of the World records that Anna's historically nested only on the Pacific slope from northern Baja California north to the San Francisco Bay area. Everything it has since done in Oregon, Washington, and beyond started from this core range.

Quick ID: Adult males glow rose-pink from the top of the head down — the only North American hummingbird with an iridescent crown as well as throat, and it looks flat black until light hits it directly. Females are stocky and grayish-green below, usually with a small red throat spot. The realistic look-alike is female Costa's in the deserts: Anna's is noticeably larger and grayer underneath, the throat spot is rose-red rather than violet, and its call is a hard, sharp "tzip" versus Costa's high, dry "tic."

Allen's Hummingbird

California is essentially this species' entire world — and it lives two different lives within the state. Birds of the World describes the resident subspecies, Selasphorus sasin sedentarius, as nonmigratory and currently expanding its breeding range in southern California, while the nominate subspecies breeds along the northern and central coast and migrates to Mexico for the winter. Cornell's range account puts it plainly: birds breeding on the Channel Islands and around Los Angeles are primarily year-round residents. The data agrees. Allen's peaks at 16% of checklists statewide in late May, but around San Diego it reaches 34% in early August and never leaves. Around Sacramento, in the Central Valley, it barely registers at all.

Quick ID: Adult males show a coppery-orange throat, rufous flanks and tail, and a solid green back — that green back is the one field mark that separates them from most adult male Rufous. Females and immatures are the honest problem: All About Birds calls Rufous and Allen's "nearly indistinguishable in the field," and the only reliable separator — the width of the outer tail feathers, narrow in Allen's and broad in Rufous — usually needs a bird in the hand or an excellent spread-tail photograph. In coastal Southern California, an unidentified one is far more likely a resident Allen's.

Costa's Hummingbird

California's desert hummingbird, and a year-round resident wherever there's something in bloom. Around Riverside — the Colorado and Mojave desert region — Costa's is reported on 30% of checklists at its mid-April peak and is present in every week of the year. Statewide it peaks at just over 3%, because outside the deserts and the dry interior of the south coast it thins out fast: barely 1% around Sacramento or the Bay Area. Birds of the World documents both the Sonoran and Mojave desert populations and the coastal California ones, and the Audubon Field Guide notes that where flowers are present all year, as in many suburban gardens, increasing numbers of Costa's now remain year-round rather than dispersing after the desert bloom.

Quick ID: Adult males are unmistakable — a violet-purple crown and a gorget that flares out past the sides of the neck like a mustache. Females and immatures are small, short-tailed, and whiter-bellied than any of the state's other common species, often with a faint pale eyebrow wrapping a darker cheek and a slightly droopy bill; about half of females show a small purple throat patch. Against female Black-chinned, which overlaps in desert-edge riparian sites from March to September, Costa's is smaller, shorter-billed, and paler below, and its call is a high dry "tic" where Black-chinned's is a low, soft "tew."

Rufous Hummingbird

Rufous is the one year-round resident on California's list that earns the label in two separate pieces rather than all at once. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife calls it "a common migrant and uncommon summer resident," with breeding confirmed in recent years in the Trinity Mountains of Trinity and Humboldt counties — a genuine, if small, breeding population at the southern end of the species' Pacific Northwest range. Most of the state sees it in passage: a northbound wave that peaks statewide in the first week of April, then a southbound return through the mountains and Central Valley that reaches nearly 11% of Sacramento-area checklists in late August. The winter piece is real but small. CDFW describes it as "a rare, but probably regular, winter resident in southern California," and the San Diego County Bird Atlas notes that separating winter Rufous from Allen's "usually requires careful study of birds in hand" — only a handful, including a specimen collected at Carlsbad in January 1994, have ever been confirmed to species.

Quick ID: Adult males are almost entirely orange-rufous — back, flanks, and tail — with a glowing orange-red throat; most show a rufous back where Allen's shows green, though a minority of Rufous males carry green on the back too. Females and immatures are green above with cinnamon-washed flanks and rufous at the base of the tail, and are not safely separable from female Allen's in the field. The Rufous/Allen's pair is the single hardest identification on California's list, and many birds are best left as "Selasphorus."

California's Summer Breeders

Three more species nest in California but leave for the winter, each in its own corner of the state — the Central Valley's riparian corridors, the Sierra Nevada high country, and the desert ranges along the Nevada line.

Black-chinned Hummingbird

The Central Valley's hummingbird. Black-chinned is reported on nearly 27% of Sacramento-area checklists at its late-August peak, tied tightly to cottonwood, willow, and sycamore corridors, but it thins to under 5% statewide and about 1% in the Bay Area. Birds of the World places its range from southern British Columbia through most of the western United States, and the San Diego County Bird Atlas describes it in the south as "a fairly common migrant and summer resident, in the latter role mainly in riparian and oak woodland." It arrives in early April and is essentially gone by the end of September.

Quick ID: Adult males have a velvety black throat edged by a thin violet band that only shows at the right angle — in most light the whole throat just reads black. Females and immatures are slender, green above and plain white below, with a longer, slightly drooping bill and a habit of pumping and fanning the tail almost constantly while hovering. That tail-wagging is often the best separator from female Anna's, which holds its tail still, is plumper, and usually shows a red throat spot.

Calliope Hummingbird

North America's smallest breeding bird nests high in the Sierra Nevada. Birds of the World and the Western Hummingbird Partnership both document Sierra breeding, with the Partnership noting that Calliope ranges in elevation up to about 3,400 meters — timberline — in California's Sierra. Statewide it peaks at under 1% of checklists in the third week of April, when migrants are still passing through the lowlands on the way up; it registers in the Bay Area, Central Valley, and south coast only briefly in spring, and is gone from the state by early autumn.

Quick ID: Tiny even for a hummingbird, with a short tail that sits about level with the wingtips at rest — on Allen's, Rufous, and Broad-tailed the tail extends past the folded wings. Adult males show magenta streaks radiating down a white throat rather than a solid gorget, unlike anything else in California. Females carry a pale, evenly spread peachy wash across the breast rather than the brighter coppery sides of female Rufous, and show very little rufous in the tail.

Broad-tailed Hummingbird

A Rocky Mountain bird at the very western edge of its range. Birds of the World confirms that Broad-tailed breeds in the White, Inyo, and Panamint ranges of eastern California — a thin but genuine breeding-edge population, not a scattering of strays, and one that isn't flagged as a review species on the California Bird Records Committee's official checklist. Because those ranges sit far from where most Californians bird, its statewide eBird signal is essentially at the rounding floor; it registers only faintly in the deserts and around San Diego, where a few pass through between February and October.

Quick ID: Adult males have a rose-magenta throat and a green crown, and produce a distinctive high metallic wing-trill in flight that no other California hummingbird makes. Females and immatures are the tricky ones: they look like a slightly larger, longer-tailed female Allen's or Rufous, with the tail extending well beyond the wings, less copper in the tail, grayer cheeks, and a thin white eye-ring the Selasphorus females lack.

If You're Lucky: California's Rarities

Once you're past the seven species that breed or live here, California's list turns into a record book. One species is rare but regular enough that the state's records committee no longer reviews it; one is an eastern bird that reaches California a few times a decade; and five are true one-offs — a handful of accepted records each, most of them decades old.

Broad-billed Hummingbird

An Arizona and Mexican species that has become a rare but regular fall-and-winter visitor to coastal Southern California. It was once a California Bird Records Committee review species, and the Committee's 42nd Annual Report tallied 94 accepted records through 2015 plus four more from 2016 — roughly a hundred birds, enough that the Committee removed it from the review list as rare-but-regular. The pattern shows in the data too: in the deserts it shows a faint early-fall signal, and around San Diego it peaks in December — exactly where and when a wintering vagrant from the Southwest would turn up. Statewide it sits at the eBird rounding floor.

Quick ID: The bright red, black-tipped bill is diagnostic in every plumage — of California's regular species, none shows red on the bill. Adult males add a shimmering blue throat on a mostly emerald body. Females are duller, gray below, with a white line curving down behind the eye and a bill that's red at the base with a dark tip.

Ruby-throated Hummingbird

The East's hummingbird makes it to California only as a genuine rarity, and the Committee's records tell a remarkably consistent story. Thirty-one individuals have been accepted through the 49th Annual Report, covering records through 2023, and the Committee notes that over three-quarters of them — 77% — fall in the last half of August or the first half of September. Every one has been a short-stay bird, most present for a week or less, each a different individual in a different year. The state's first was found at Sagehen Creek Field Station in Nevada County in May 1975. That's a real, decades-long pattern of vagrancy, but not an annual one, which is why it's tiered here as a rare visitor rather than a migrant.

Quick ID: Adult males show an all-red iridescent throat, a green crown, and a forked black tail. Females and immatures are the concern, because they're extremely close to female Black-chinned — the most useful mark is that Ruby-throated's tail extends clearly past the folded wingtips, while Black-chinned's wings reach nearly to the tail tip. Any late-August Archilochus in California that isn't obviously a Black-chinned is worth photographing carefully.

Blue-throated Mountain-gem

Three accepted records through 2014, two of them from that single year. The Committee's 40th Annual Report documents a bird on Palomar Mountain in San Diego County in July 2014 — "only the second record for the state and the first from southern California" — and an immature male at Crestline, San Bernardino County, that September. The Crestline bird had a story: it had been banded at Portal, Arizona, in July 2013, was later found injured at La Mesa in San Diego County in December 2014, and was released back at Portal in March 2015. Nothing has been confirmed since.

Quick ID: The largest hummingbird that nests in the United States, with two white face stripes — one above the eye and a short one below it — a gray belly, and big white corners on a blackish tail that flash in flight. Adult males add a sapphire throat. Against Rivoli's, the other big dark hummingbird on this list, look for those two face stripes (Rivoli's has only a small white dot behind the eye) and the large white tail corners.

Mexican Violetear

California's oldest and most isolated hummingbird record: a single bird on Mt. Pinos, Kern County, from July 30 to August 1, 1977, when the species was still called Green Violet-ear. The California Bird Records Committee originally accepted it on a sight report from six committee members, then unanimously re-endorsed it in 2006 after a low-resolution photograph surfaced. A second 1977 report from Berkeley was not accepted. Forty-nine years on, it remains the state's only confirmed record, and it predates the eBird era entirely.

Quick ID: Unmistakable if you get a look — an all-glittering-green bird, larger than any of California's regular species, with a violet-blue ear patch and a violet-blue patch across the chest, a straight black bill, and a blue-green tail crossed by a dark band. Both sexes look alike.

Rivoli's Hummingbird

Two accepted records, a year apart, and nothing confirmed since. The Committee's 29th Annual Report records the first: a bird at Kate Sessions Park in San Diego from October 11 to November 29, 2003, described as "the first identified conclusively in California" under the species' former name, Magnificent Hummingbird. The second came the following year at Eureka, Humboldt County — a remarkable distance north for a bird whose United States range is the sky-island canyons of southeastern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico.

Quick ID: A very large, dark, long-billed hummingbird — roughly double the mass of a Black-chinned, with a bill up to half again as long. Adult males can look all-black until the light catches an emerald throat and violet crown. Females are gray below with a small white mark behind the eye and green central tail feathers; the size and bill length alone rule out every regular California species.

Violet-crowned Hummingbird

Five accepted records, all between 1976 and 1999, and the most widely scattered set of any California rarity: Santa Paula in Ventura County (July to late December 1976), Bouquet Canyon in Los Angeles County (May 1987), Kenwood in Sonoma County (March 1992), east Carlsbad in San Diego County (November to December 1996), and Westhaven in Humboldt County (September 1999), which the Committee's 25th Annual Report called "only the fifth for California." Twenty-seven years without a confirmed record since puts it firmly in the historic column.

Quick ID: The only hummingbird in the United States with no colored gorget at all — clean white from throat to undertail, with an iridescent violet-blue crown and a long, nearly straight reddish-orange bill tipped in black. Sexes look alike. Size and that bill color separate it from female Black-chinned and Costa's, both of which are smaller with all-dark bills.

Xantus's Hummingbird

Two accepted records, thirty-six years apart, and the only United States records of this Baja California endemic. The first was the Ventura female of January to March 1988 that twice attempted to nest. The second, an adult male at Bishop in Inyo County from April 25 to 28, 2024, was hailed by the Committee's 50th Annual Report as "California's second Xantus's Hummingbird" and "the first male and first spring migrant documented north of Mexico." A third bird, reported at Yaqui Well in San Diego County in December 1986, was originally accepted in 1987 but was re-examined by the Committee and voted "not established" in its 48th Annual Report, because the single-observer sight record had no first-hand documentation from the day of the encounter.

Quick ID: A mostly glittering green hummingbird with a wide white eyebrow, a buff belly, reddish in the tail, and a red bill with a black tip; sexes are similar. At 3 to 4 inches it's the size of California's common species, so the combination of buff underparts, rufous tail, and red bill is what to look for — no regular California hummingbird shows all three.

California Hummingbirds at a Glance

Six of California's fourteen species show up often enough on eBird checklists to chart. Anna's dominates, but unlike most states, the second bar is no sliver: Allen's holds its own, and four more species register clearly behind it.

Statewide eBird checklist data, 2016–2025. Eight documented species are too rare to chart: Broad-tailed, Broad-billed, Ruby-throated, and Violet-crowned sit at eBird's rounding floor statewide, Xantus's has a single measurable detection, and Blue-throated Mountain-gem, Mexican Violetear, and Rivoli's have no eBird signal in this window at all.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the most common hummingbird in California?

Anna's Hummingbird, and it isn't close — it's reported on 46% of California checklists at its late-September peak, and 63% around Sacramento. Allen's Hummingbird is a clear second at 16% statewide, and is the dominant bird in coastal Southern California, where the resident subspecies never leaves.

Which hummingbirds live in California all year?

Four species are classified as year-round residents, more than any other state. Anna's is present statewide in every month; Allen's is year-round in Southern California through its resident subspecies; Costa's is year-round in the deserts and dry southern coast. Rufous earns the label more narrowly — it breeds in the Trinity Mountains and a few overwinter in the south, though most winter Selasphorus can't be confirmed to species in the field.

Do Ruby-throated Hummingbirds occur in California?

Only as a genuine rarity. The California Bird Records Committee has accepted 31 individuals since the state's first in 1975, and 77% of them turned up in a tight window from late August to mid-September. Each was a short-stay bird in a different year, so it isn't an annual visitor — if one shows up at your feeder, photograph it and report it to eBird.

What is the rarest hummingbird ever recorded in California?

By record count, Mexican Violetear — a single bird on Mt. Pinos in 1977, and nothing since. Xantus's Hummingbird is the more remarkable case: California's two records, in 1988 and 2024, are the only accepted United States records of this Baja California endemic, and the 1988 bird actually built a nest and laid eggs in Ventura.

How do I tell a female Anna's from a female Costa's Hummingbird?

Size and the throat spot. Female Anna's is noticeably larger and grayer below, and its throat spot, when present, is rose-red; female Costa's is smaller, shorter-tailed, and whiter-bellied, with a violet throat spot on about half of birds, a pale eyebrow wrapping a dark cheek, and a slightly droopy bill. Voice settles most of the rest — Anna's gives a hard, sharp "tzip," Costa's a high, dry "tic."

Why We Created This Guide

Pop's Birding has been helping hummingbird lovers for three generations. One of the questions our customers ask most often is "what hummingbirds are actually in my state?" — we built this guide to give a direct, sourced answer for California specifically, not a generic one. Most identification content treats California as "Anna's plus a few others," and that undersells a state where four species are classified as year-round residents, three more breed in three different landscapes, and the rarities range from a hundred-record regular to a Baja endemic that has been confirmed north of the border exactly twice. Which of those you'll actually see depends enormously on where in California you are, and this page is built to make that call.

How We Created This Guide

Source and scope. Statewide eBird bar chart data from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, 2016–2025, plus four counties chosen to represent California's main hummingbird landscapes — Alameda for the Bay Area, Sacramento for the Central Valley, San Diego for the south coast, and Riverside for the deserts — cross-checked against the California Bird Records Committee's official state checklist (updated May 26, 2026) and the Committee's published Annual Reports in Western Birds.

How we separate a real pattern from a single well-publicized bird. A rare bird draws birders, and a few weeks of heavy reporting on one individual can look like a modest recurring presence in raw checklist data. Before any species goes on the chart as a regular, we check its week-by-week signal for recurrence across separate years rather than a single cluster, and then check it against the Committee's own accepted-record counts and dates. That second check is what tiers Ruby-throated as a rarity rather than a migrant: its eBird signal comes from 31 different short-stay birds across five decades, not from a seasonal population.

What makes the frequency chart honest. Only species that clear a practical threshold above eBird's rounding floor get a bar — six of the fourteen. The other eight are named in the caption rather than plotted, because a bar for a species with one or zero measurable detections would misrepresent it. Timing — when each species arrives, peaks, and leaves — is the calendar's job, and lives on the California hummingbird calendar.

What's original here. The tier grouping follows the Committee's own review-list status rather than a generic rare/common split — including the fact that Broad-billed was reviewed and then delisted, and that Xantus's 1986 report was accepted and then un-accepted. Every rarity's status traces to a specific Annual Report, and the identification notes lean on documented field-separation limits, including the honest one: female and immature Rufous and Allen's are not reliably separable in the field, and this page says so rather than inventing a mark.

Sources

• eBird bar chart data, Cornell Lab of Ornithology — California statewide plus Alameda, Sacramento, San Diego, and Riverside counties, 2016–2025.
• California Bird Records Committee, Official California Checklist — Western Field Ornithologists. Source for all 14 species and their review-list status.
• California Bird Records Committee Annual Reports, Western Birds — 22nd and 25th (Violet-crowned records), 29th (Rivoli's), 40th (Blue-throated Mountain-gem), 42nd (Broad-billed), 48th and 50th (Xantus's), and 49th (Ruby-throated). Source for every rare-species record count, date, and location on this page.
• California Department of Fish and Wildlife, California Wildlife Habitat Relationships life-history accounts — Anna's, Allen's, Black-chinned, and Rufous Hummingbird status and breeding.
• San Diego County Bird Atlas, San Diego Natural History Museum — south-coast status and the Rufous/Allen's winter identification limit.
• Western Hummingbird Partnership — Calliope Hummingbird Sierra Nevada breeding elevation.