Aug 01, 2026
New Jersey Hummingbird Season: A Month-by-Month Calendar
Timing derived from eBird data, 2016–2025 (sourced July 2026)
New Jersey runs on one dependable breeding season and a genuinely interesting rare-visitor subplot — and the two don't follow the same map. Here's how the year actually unfolds, county by county.
The short answer: Cape May and Atlantic County are reliably busy by the last week of April; Essex and Sussex wait until the second week of May. Most Ruby-throateds have gone by late September — and that's when the rare visitors start turning up.
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| When do they arrive? | Mid-April on the southern coast; second week of May inland |
| When should feeders go up? | Mid-April statewide |
| When do they nest? | Late May through late July |
| When do they leave? | From late July; most gone by late September |
| Any in winter? | Rare western visitors — mostly Rufous, on the southern coast |
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Arrival windows county by county, when to hang feeders, and the late-season window when New Jersey's rare visitors turn up — printed small enough to tape inside the shed door.
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New Jersey's Hummingbird Season at a Glance
Before the county-by-county detail below, here's the whole season in one picture — one overwhelmingly dominant breeder, and the rare visitors that show up on a very different scale, so note the right-hand axis.
How often each species turns up on eBird checklists, week by week — statewide, 2016–2025. Calliope and Rufous sit on the right-hand scale for a reason: both are genuine rarities, not a real second population, so their specific percentages are closer to "has been recorded" than a measurable rate. The county-by-county breakdown below shows how the spring wave itself moves from the coast inland.
That statewide curve is really two very different counties averaged into one line — where you land inside it depends on whether you're on the coast or inland. Here's the region-by-region detail, so you can see exactly where you fall.
Regional Arrival Snapshot
| County | Ruby-throated Reliably Common By |
|---|---|
| Cape May (far south, coastal) | Last week of April |
| Atlantic (mid coastal) | Last week of April |
| Essex (NYC metro, north) | Second week of May |
| Sussex (NW Highlands, inland) | Second week of May |
Windows derived from eBird bar chart data (Cornell Lab of Ornithology), 2016–2025, for Cape May, Atlantic, Essex, and Sussex counties. "Reliably common" is defined as the first week each county's Ruby-throated reports reach 25% of that county's seasonal peak. The roughly two-to-three-week coastal-to-inland gap is consistent with the general principle that spring migration advances northward tracking flower bloom and lags at higher latitude and elevation. No single authority publishes this exact county-level breakdown for New Jersey; this is our own analysis.
January, February & March: The Quiet Season
| Statewide | The quietest stretch of New Jersey's hummingbird year. Breeding Ruby-throateds are gone, and the fall rare-visitor window is mostly closed. Any hummingbird seen now is exceptional and worth documenting. |
| Late March | Occasionally the very first Ruby-throated scouts reach the southern coast — but reliable statewide arrival is still weeks away. Wait for mid-April before expecting birds at your feeder. |
If you hosted a rare visitor through the winter, keep the feeder up and monitored until you're certain it has moved on — late-lingering birds sometimes carry into February or early March. For everyone else, have a feeder cleaned and ready by early to mid-April.
Stock up before the first wave hits.
The busiest feeder days arrive all at once — having the 2lb Nectarlyte® powder or Nectarade® liquid concentrate on hand means you're mixing fresh nectar every few days, not scrambling for supplies mid-surge.
April: The Coast Gets There First
The first Ruby-throated Hummingbirds of spring reach Cape May and Atlantic County by mid-April, with feeders reliably busy by the last week of the month. This is the point to have your feeder up if you're anywhere in southern New Jersey.
May: The Rest of the State Catches Up
Ruby-throateds continue moving north and inland, reaching Essex County and the NYC metro corridor, and finally the higher, cooler Sussex County Highlands, by the second week of May — a real two-to-three-week lag behind the coast. Peak spring migration and territory-settling happens statewide during this window.
June: Nesting Season Begins
New Jersey's breeding Ruby-throateds settle in statewide, favoring yards with oak, maple, beech, birch, hornbeam, poplar, hackberry, pine, or spruce nearby. Feeder activity can taper off somewhat as females become secretive around the nest.
Why nesting season is the demanding one
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 →July: The Heat Brings the Pests
Nesting continues into late July, but New Jersey's summer heat also brings ants, bees, and wasps out in force around feeders — competing with hummingbirds for the same sugar water right when they need it most.
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.
August: Southbound Migration Begins
Breeding Ruby-throateds start moving south. This is also when the Cape May Bird Observatory's Cape May Songbird Stopover Project ramps up, banding thousands of songbirds each fall — Ruby-throated Hummingbirds are a genuine, documented part of the catch, with 7 banded in a single week during the 2025 season alone.
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 — Rufous is especially known for this. A second feeder and a second swing, spaced out of sight of each other, gives another bird — the incoming migrant or a displaced resident — its own station to guard instead of fighting over one.
Shop a second swing →September: Most Ruby-throateds Depart
New Jersey's breeding population declines fast through September — still well over half its peak in the first half of the month, then dropping sharply from the last week of September into early October. This is also the turning point of the calendar: from here on, any hummingbird you see is increasingly likely to be a rare visitor rather than a lingering local bird.
What to do: Take your feeder down about two weeks after your last sighting, not by a fixed date — that accounts for your own yard and this year's weather better than any calendar date can. If you're on the southern coast, consider leaving at least one feeder up and monitored into fall regardless, since that's when New Jersey's rare visitors tend to show up.
October, November & December: New Jersey's Rare Visitors Show Up
This is where New Jersey's hummingbird story gets genuinely interesting. Rufous Hummingbird is the most frequent rare visitor, and along with Allen's Hummingbird, its records concentrate almost entirely on the southern coast — Cape May and Atlantic counties — consistent with Cape May's well-known role as a migrant funnel, where the peninsula's shape and the wide crossing over Delaware Bay concentrate birds before they continue south.
Calliope Hummingbird breaks that pattern: New Jersey's most notable recent record was a bird that set up at a Point Pleasant feeder in Ocean County and stayed the entire winter, from November 2020 to April 2021. And the state's rarest hummingbird ever recorded, a single Broad-billed Hummingbird, turned up at Heislerville in Cumberland County in November 2022 — its only confirmed New Jersey appearance to date.
Pop's tip: If you keep a feeder up through fall and winter, you're playing two different odds at once: a real, decent chance at Rufous or Allen's if you're on the southern coast, and a true lottery-ticket chance at something like New Jersey's one-and-only Broad-billed anywhere else in the state. Our winter hummingbird feeder care guide covers heated feeders and the two-feeder swap.
This is the planting month.
Sow now and native wildflowers get the cold, moist period most varieties need to bloom reliably next spring, from late September into early November.
Shop the Perfect Little Sanctuary® blend →Frequently Asked Questions
When do hummingbirds come back to New Jersey?
Cape May and Atlantic County see their first Ruby-throateds by mid-April, and are reliably busy by the last week of the month. Essex County and the NYC metro corridor follow, with the Sussex County Highlands last, in the second week of May.
When do hummingbirds leave New Jersey?
Southbound movement starts in late July, and the breeding population declines fast through September, with most gone by the end of the month. After that, any hummingbird you see is increasingly likely to be a rare western visitor rather than a local bird.
How long do hummingbirds stay in New Jersey?
About five months on the southern coast — mid-April through late September — and closer to four in the northern Highlands, where they arrive two to three weeks later.
Why does my North Jersey feeder stay quiet in April?
Because the wave hasn't reached you. Essex and Sussex counties don't see reliable Ruby-throated activity until the second week of May, a genuine two-to-three-week lag behind Cape May and Atlantic County. A quiet feeder in April is normal in the north.
Should I keep a feeder up through a New Jersey winter?
It's worth it if you're on the southern coast, where Rufous and Allen's records concentrate. Elsewhere it's a longer shot — but New Jersey's only-ever Broad-billed Hummingbird turned up at a Cumberland County feeder in November 2022, so the lottery does occasionally pay.
Why We Built This Calendar
Pop's Birding has been helping hummingbird lovers for three generations. One of the questions our customers ask most often is "When do hummingbirds arrive and leave my state?" — we built this calendar to give a direct, sourced answer, not a generic one. Most timing advice online gives a single date for an entire state, which is exactly wrong for New Jersey: Cape May and Atlantic County, on the southern coast, are reliably busy by the last week of April, while Essex County and the Sussex County Highlands don't catch up until the second week of May — a real two-to-three-week gap across a state many people think of as small enough to have one answer. We wanted a calendar that tells you the truth for where you actually live, not an average that's wrong on both ends of the state.
How We Built This Calendar
Every date on this page comes from eBird bar chart data (Cornell Lab of Ornithology), 2016–2025, for New Jersey statewide and four counties chosen for real geographic spread: Cape May and Atlantic on the southern coast, Essex in the NYC metro corridor, and Sussex in the inland Highlands. A county counts as "reliably common" from the first week its Ruby-throated reports reach 25% of that county's own seasonal peak. No single authority publishes this county-level breakdown for New Jersey, so the coastal-to-inland comparison, including where the state's rare visitors turn up, is our own analysis of the raw data.
Sources
We pulled eBird bar chart data for New Jersey statewide and for four counties — Cape May, Atlantic, Essex, and Sussex — covering 2016 through 2025, and read the seasonal shape and regional pattern directly off the reporting rates ourselves. Percentages describe how often a species appears on birdwatchers' submitted checklists — a measure of how likely you are to encounter one, not a population count.
- eBird bar chart data, Cornell Lab of Ornithology — New Jersey statewide and county-level (Cape May, Atlantic, Essex, Sussex), 2016–2025. Source for all month-by-month seasonal figures and the coastal-to-inland regional arrival pattern.
- Rutgers New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station, Fact Sheet FS1316, "Attracting Ruby-throated Hummingbirds to Your Yard." Source for statewide feeder timing and nesting-tree corroboration.
- New Jersey Bird Records Committee, Accepted Records List (New Jersey Audubon). Source for the Allen's, Calliope, and Broad-billed Hummingbird records, including the Point Pleasant (Ocean County) overwintering Calliope and the Heislerville (Cumberland County) Broad-billed record.
- New Jersey Audubon / U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (Cape May National Wildlife Refuge). Source for the Cape May migrant-funnel effect.
- Cape May Bird Observatory (New Jersey Audubon). Source for the Cape May Songbird Stopover Project banding figures.
- 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.
Event dates and formats change from year to year. 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. We take the guesswork out of the calendar. Joining takes about thirty seconds, and there's 10% off your first order in it.
Join Insider Birding Access →Free to join. 10% off your first order.
Shop New Jersey's Hummingbird Favorites
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.
