New York shares its seven-species hummingbird list with five other states — Virginia, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Maryland. But nowhere else in New York's own region comes close: Connecticut and Massachusetts each show five, and Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, and Rhode Island all sit at two or three. For a state whose hummingbird reputation begins and ends with Ruby-throated Hummingbird in most people's minds, that's a genuinely deep list — one confirmed breeder, one real recurring winter visitor, and five documented rarities, two of them first-ever state records found within weeks of each other.

This page is about telling all seven apart — what each one actually looks like, and how sure you can really be about an identification. For when they show up and how to time your feeder for them, see our New York hummingbird calendar. For feeder setup, nectar, and native plants, see our guide to attracting hummingbirds in New York.

All seven documented New York hummingbird species, grouped by tier — statewide eBird data, 2016–2025, cross-checked against the New York State Avian Records Committee's own accepted-record history.

The Hummingbird You're Most Likely to See

Ruby-throated Hummingbird

New York's only confirmed breeding hummingbird, and the species behind essentially every sighting from late April through early October. Adult males have a brilliant iridescent ruby-red throat that can look black or dark red until light catches it at the right angle, set off by a dark eye mask and a slender, slightly downcurved bill. Females and immatures lack the red throat entirely — look instead for the same emerald-green back, gray-white underparts, and short, forked (rather than pointed) tail. At 2.8–3.5 inches long, it's genuinely tiny, but it's the one species in this guide you don't need to second-guess: if you see a hummingbird in New York between May and September, it's this one.

New York Hummingbirds in Winter

Once Ruby-throated leaves for the season, New York's hummingbird story doesn't actually end — it just changes species entirely.

Rufous Hummingbird

New York's one genuine, recurring non-breeding visitor — not a single-bird fluke, but a real pattern documented across dozens of records nearly every year. Adult males are unmistakable: a vivid, glowing orange-red gorget over a bright coppery-orange back and belly, the only largely rufous-backed hummingbird in North America. They're also famously territorial, often claiming a single feeder as their own and chasing off anything else that visits. Females and immatures are far harder — greenish above with rufous only at the tail base and flanks — and this is exactly where New York's records get genuinely complicated: Rufous and Allen's Hummingbird overlap enough in female/immature plumage that Cornell's own guidance calls many individuals "nearly indistinguishable" in the field, which is why New York's own records committee accepts a combined "Rufous/Allen's" category for birds that can't be safely separated even by experienced observers. Most New York records fall from September through the winter, though records exist as early as late July.

If You're Lucky: New York's Genuine Rarities

Five more species have real, committee-accepted New York records — none of them common, all of them real. Two are recent enough to be genuinely notable: New York's first-ever confirmed sightings of two different western species, found within weeks of each other in fall 2023.

Black-chinned Hummingbird

New York's newest addition to its official state list, and one of the more remarkable finds in recent New York birding history. A Randall's Island Park horticulturist first noticed the bird on 15 November 2023; local birders confirmed the identification days later, and it stayed put through mid-December — the first Black-chinned Hummingbird ever documented in New York State. Adult males show a velvety black chin and upper throat with a thin band of iridescent purple visible only in good light — from most angles, the throat simply reads all black, bordered by a small white spot behind the eye and a long, straight black bill. Females closely resemble female Ruby-throated, which is exactly why a wintering Archilochus this far from its normal range drew birders from across the city once word got out.

Allen's Hummingbird

New York's other first-ever state record, found the same fall as Black-chinned — an immature bird discovered at a Riverhead, Suffolk County feeder on 21 October 2023 that went on to over-winter all the way into early April the following year, an extraordinary stay for a species whose normal range is a narrow strip of the Pacific coast. Adult males show a deep reddish-orange gorget over a bronze-green back and coppery-orange belly, with a notably narrow outermost tail feather. As with Rufous above, females and immatures are frequently not safely separable in the field — New York's own records committee treats many such birds as "Rufous/Allen's" rather than force an identification the evidence doesn't support.

Calliope Hummingbird

New York's most-recorded rarity, with six documented reports since 2001 spanning Manhattan, Westchester, and Long Island — genuinely rare, but not a one-off. The most recent, a cooperative adult male in Eastport, Suffolk County, stayed for over two weeks in November 2022. Calliope is also North America's smallest breeding bird, just 3.1–3.5 inches long, with a build to match: a short bill, a short tail that doesn't extend past the wingtips, and a distinctly hunched, compact posture. Adult males have a genuinely unique field mark — magenta throat feathers arranged as separate rays on a white background, rather than the solid iridescent patch every other species in this guide shows.

Broad-billed Hummingbird

Documented in New York exactly twice, both in 2006 — a male in the Town of Rose, Wayne County in late June, and another at a feeder in Owego, Tioga County that August. Both records are old enough now that a new sighting would be genuinely newsworthy. The species is easy to place even at a distance: a bright red bill tipped in black is diagnostic among New York's hummingbirds, paired with a shimmering blue-sapphire throat and rich emerald body.

Anna's Hummingbird

New York's rarest confirmed species by record count — just three ever, spread across nearly two decades: Binghamton in 1998, Liberty (Sullivan County) in 2007, and Orleans County in 2017. The 2007 bird didn't survive its stay, and its specimen went to the American Museum of Natural History — the only Anna's Hummingbird specimen ever collected from northeastern North America. Anna's is the only North American hummingbird with a fully iridescent rose-pink crown as well as gorget on adult males, though without direct sun the color can wash out to dull brown, gray, or nearly black. It's also stockier than New York's other rarities, with a broader tail that extends past the wingtips at rest and a habit of holding that tail still while hovering, unlike the constant tail-pumping of Black-chinned.

New York Hummingbirds at a Glance

Ruby-throated Hummingbird so overwhelmingly dominates New York's sightings — a statewide peak over 22% of summer checklists, against a combined total of well under 1% for every other species — that a shared-scale chart would show one full bar and six lines too thin to read. The table below carries the real numbers instead.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many types of hummingbirds are in New York?

Seven species have real, documented New York records: Ruby-throated (the only breeder), Rufous (a genuine recurring winter visitor), and five rarities — Black-chinned, Allen's, Calliope, Broad-billed, and Anna's.

What is the most common hummingbird in New York?

Ruby-throated Hummingbird, by an overwhelming margin — it's the only species that breeds in the state and accounts for nearly every sighting from spring through early fall.

Are there hummingbirds in New York in the winter?

Ruby-throated Hummingbird doesn't stay past October — it's the only species that breeds here. But four other species have real winter records: Rufous, Black-chinned, Allen's, and Calliope Hummingbird have all been documented in New York during the colder months. See our New York hummingbird calendar for when each one actually shows up.

How do you tell a Rufous Hummingbird from an Allen's Hummingbird?

Adult males are separable — Rufous has a rufous-colored back, Allen's a green one — but females and immatures often aren't. The similarity is close enough that New York's own records committee accepts a combined "Rufous/Allen's" category rather than force an identification the evidence doesn't support.

Has a hummingbird ever been seen in New York City?

Yes, repeatedly — Ruby-throated breeds in city parks every summer, and several of New York's rarest records, including its first-ever Black-chinned Hummingbird, were found in New York City itself.

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 kind of hummingbird did I just see?" — we built this guide to give a direct, sourced answer specific to New York, not a generic list of every hummingbird in North America. Most identification content treats every state the same; New York's real list is genuinely unusual for the Northeast, and two of its seven species have only been confirmed in the last few years. This page exists to reflect that actual, current reality — not a stale count from a decade ago.

How We Created This Guide

Source and scope. eBird bar chart data, Cornell Lab of Ornithology, statewide New York, 2016–2025, cross-checked directly against the New York State Avian Records Committee's (NYSARC) own published decision tables and the Kingbird, the New York State Ornithological Association's peer-reviewed journal.

How we separate a real pattern from a single well-publicized bird. A rare species' statewide percentage alone can be misleading — a well-publicized individual draws a surge of birders traveling specifically to see it, which can produce a number that looks like modest, regular presence without reflecting any real population pattern. Before any species on this page was tiered, we checked its actual weekly records for multi-year recurrence rather than trusting the summary percentage alone, then cross-referenced that against NYSARC's own accepted-record history — which is also how Rufous Hummingbird's near-annual pattern was confirmed as genuine, and how each rarity's exact record count was verified rather than estimated.

What's original here. The species tiering, the individually verified record history behind every "how many times has this been seen" claim on this page, and the Rufous/Allen's field-separation note are Pop's Birding's own research — not a rewrite of any single source. For arrival and departure timing, see our New York hummingbird calendar, which owns that content specifically.

Sources

• eBird bar chart data, Cornell Lab of Ornithology — New York statewide, 2016–2025.
• New York State Avian Records Committee (NYSARC), a committee of the New York State Ornithological Association — source for every rare-species record count and first-state-record detail on this page.
• All About Birds, Cornell Lab of Ornithology — source for identification field marks.