In September 1984, a hummingbird that was entirely glittering green with violet patches on its ears and chest showed up at a feeder in Fort Smith. It was photographed in early October, and it became Arkansas's first record of a species then called Green Violet-ear — a bird whose normal range ends in the highlands of Mexico. That could have been the end of the story. Instead, Arkansas has gone on to accept six more Mexican Violetear records, the most recent at feeders near Eureka Springs in July 2022, which makes this tropical wanderer a stranger-but-recurring part of the state's list rather than a single fluke.

Eleven hummingbird species have been accepted to Arkansas's official state list. That matches Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Kansas, edges Missouri's ten and Tennessee's nine, and trails only Louisiana and Texas among the state's neighbors. But only one of the eleven nests here. The other ten are a winter-visitor pair and eight rarities, most of them western or tropical birds that have been confirmed in Arkansas anywhere from once to thirteen times — and the difference between a common one and a rare one can come down to the width of a tail feather.

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

All 11 documented Arkansas hummingbird species, grouped by tier — statewide eBird data, 2016–2025, cross-checked against the Arkansas Bird Records Committee's review list and its published accepted-record history.

The Hummingbird You're Most Likely to See

Ruby-throated Hummingbird

Arkansas's only nesting hummingbird, and its overwhelming majority. Ruby-throated is reported on 38% of all Arkansas checklists at its early-September peak, and reaches 52% around Little Rock and 64% around Hot Springs — where late-summer feeder traffic, boosted by the year's fledglings, makes it the busiest hummingbird landscape in the state. The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission states it directly: this is "the only hummingbird species that nests in Arkansas and is most often seen in the state from April through October." Birds arrive from mid-March into April, and the last stragglers are gone by mid-October. There is no established winter population; the regular winter presence of this species stays down on the Gulf and South Atlantic coasts, and an Arkansas hummingbird in December is more likely to be one of the two species below.

Quick ID: Adult males show an all-red iridescent throat that can look solid black without direct light, a green crown, and a forked black tail. Females and immatures are green above, plain white below, with white tips on the outer tail feathers. The classic mix-up is with Black-chinned Hummingbird: on Ruby-throated, the tail extends clearly past the folded wingtips at rest, while Black-chinned's wings reach almost to the tail tip.

Arkansas Hummingbirds in Winter

Once Ruby-throated clears out in October, Arkansas's hummingbird story doesn't end — it just gets much quieter, and changes species. Two western birds show up often enough in the cold months to count as real visitors rather than one-offs.

Rufous Hummingbird

Arkansas's regular winter hummingbird. The Arkansas Bird Records Committee maintains a review list of species with ten or fewer state records, and every other western hummingbird on this page — Allen's, Calliope, Broad-tailed, Broad-billed, Rivoli's, Buff-bellied — is on it. Rufous is not. That deliberate exclusion is the Committee's own statement that this species occurs regularly, and the eBird data agrees, with real clusters in November–December and again in January–February. Around Little Rock it peaks in late January; around Hot Springs and Fayetteville, in late summer and fall as southbound migrants pass through. Statewide it never clears eBird's rounding floor — Arkansas has a small number of Rufous each winter, spread across many feeders, not a flock.

Quick ID: Adult males are almost entirely orange-rufous with a glowing orange-red throat — one of the easier Arkansas hummingbirds to call at a glance. Females and immatures are green above with cinnamon-washed flanks and rufous at the base of the tail, which separates them from the grayish-flanked female Ruby-throated. Separating them from Allen's is the genuine problem: the two are nearly indistinguishable in the field, and Arkansas's single Allen's record was confirmed by photograph of an adult male, not by a field call on a female.

Anna's Hummingbird

An irregular winter visitor, with the kind of documentation that shows exactly what "irregular" means. Anna's is absent from the Committee's review list, which the Committee reserves for species with ten or fewer state records — but the best-documented recent occurrences are a single returning bird. The Audubon Society of Central Arkansas reported a female at Vilonia, Faulkner County, that arrived on January 30, 2021, and stayed for weeks, and the Arkansas Audubon Society's own newsletter logged an Anna's at a Vilonia residence on January 30 the following winter — same town, same date, one year apart, almost certainly the same individual coming back. That's a real winter visitor, but a thin one.

Quick ID: The only North American hummingbird with an iridescent crown as well as throat — males glow rose-pink from the top of the head down, unlike anything else on Arkansas's list. Females are plump and short-billed with grayish-green flanks and usually a small red throat spot; the winter look-alike is female Black-chinned, which is slimmer, cleaner-throated, and pumps its tail constantly in flight where Anna's holds still.

If You're Lucky: Arkansas's Wandering Rarities

Eight more species have accepted Arkansas records, and the Committee's own published record histories — compiled in a pair of 2023 papers in the Journal of the Arkansas Academy of Science — let this page say exactly how many, and how recently. Four have a genuine recurring pattern, with records into the 2020s. Four have gone silent: one record each, or a cluster that ended more than fifteen years ago.

Black-chinned Hummingbird

Arkansas's most frequently confirmed rarity, and one that has quietly graduated. Tumlison and Kannan's 2023 record compilation notes the species was first reported from Union, Pulaski, and Hempstead counties, with 7 records by 2007, and "currently 13 records, mostly near Little Rock and along US Hwy 167." Passing ten records took it off the Committee's review list, which is why it's classified here as a rare-but-recurring visitor rather than an accidental. The eBird data tells the same story from a different angle — a faint December–January signal around Little Rock and nothing in summer.

Quick ID: Adult males show a throat that looks solid black in most light, with a thin iridescent purple band at the very base visible only in direct sun. Females and immatures are notoriously close to Ruby-throated — the most useful mark is that Black-chinned's folded wingtips reach nearly to the tail tip, while Ruby-throated's tail extends clearly beyond the wings. Any Archilochus hummingbird at an Arkansas feeder in December is worth photographing with that in mind, since Ruby-throated should be long gone.

Broad-billed Hummingbird

Seven records, and still going. The first was a bird at White Hall, Jefferson County, that stayed from October 2005 to March 2006 and was banded that January — the subject of its own first-state-record paper, complete with a 53.5 mm wing chord and a mass of 3.42 grams. An immature at Conway in November 2008 reappeared in January and February 2009; another turned up at Arkadelphia in July 2017. The Arkansas Audubon Society's fall 2025 newsletter reported the state's "seventh recorded Broad-billed Hummingbird," at a Bonnerdale feeder in Hot Spring County in March 2025 — a twenty-year pattern with the most recent record barely a year old.

Quick ID: The bright red, black-tipped bill is diagnostic in every plumage — no other Arkansas species shows red on the bill except Buff-bellied, which has a buff belly and rufous tail instead of Broad-billed's blue-green body. Adult males add a shimmering blue throat; females are gray below with a white line curving behind the eye.

Mexican Violetear

Seven accepted records spanning nearly four decades, which makes Arkansas one of the more reliable places in the country for a bird that shouldn't be here at all. After the 1984 Fort Smith bird came a male near Arkadelphia in June 1989, a bird near Lurton in Newton County in July 1990, one at Rogers from August to September 1990, a video-recorded bird near Ben Hur in July 1996, one at Gentry in August 2000, and the Eureka Springs bird of July 2022. Almost every record falls between June and September — a summer wanderer, not a winter one, unlike every other rarity on this list.

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

Broad-tailed Hummingbird

Five accepted records, all in late fall and winter, most of them banded or trapped: an immature female at DeQueen in September 1996 (the state's first), an adult female near Mayflower in November 1998, an immature female near Arkadelphia over the winter of 2002–03, an adult female near Beebe in January 2006, and — after a fourteen-year gap — a bird photographed at Wynne in Cross County in December 2020 and seen by many birders through January 2021. Sparse, but with a record this decade, still a live pattern.

Quick ID: Adult males show a rose-magenta throat close enough to Ruby-throated's red to cause real confusion, but with a thin white eye-ring instead of Ruby-throated's dark cheek patch, and a high metallic wing-trill in flight. Females — which is what every Arkansas record has been — show cinnamon-colored outer tail feathers where a female Ruby-throated's are green and black, plus a longer tail that extends well past the wings.

Allen's Hummingbird

One record, and a good one: an adult male photographed in Bryant, Saline County, on March 10, 2019, documented in the Academy of Science's 2023 compilation of new state species. The fact that it was an adult male is what made it a record at all — females and immatures of this species are close to inseparable from Rufous in the field.

Quick ID: Adult males show a coppery-orange throat and rufous flanks with a solid green back, where most adult male Rufous show rufous on the back. Females and immatures are nearly identical to female Rufous — the only reliable separator is outer tail feather width, which usually needs a bird in the hand — and a female Selasphorus in Arkansas should be assumed to be Rufous unless proven otherwise.

Buff-bellied Hummingbird

One record, but a long-staying one. Tumlison and Kannan describe this Gulf Coast and Mexican species as "known in Arkansas from a single immature bird photographed in Searcy," present from November 12, 1992, through March 10, 1993 — an entire winter at one White County feeder. The Arkansas Audubon Society's checklist carries it as accidental with that lone 1993 record, and there has been nothing since.

Quick ID: A fairly large hummingbird with a warm buff belly, a rufous tail, and a red, black-tipped bill; the throat and upper breast are iridescent green in good light and look gray in shade. Sexes are similar. The buff belly is the fastest way to rule out Broad-billed, the only other red-billed species on Arkansas's list.

Calliope Hummingbird

A real cluster that has since gone quiet. Roughly six records between 1999 and 2010, most of them banded: an immature male at DeQueen in October 1999, another trapped at Searcy in November 2000, an adult male near Ferndale in Pulaski County that wintered from November 2003 to April 2004 and apparently returned that fall, a Little Rock bird banded in November 2007, and a second-year male photographed in January 2010. The Arkansas Audubon Society's checklist codes it as occasional with its last record in 2010 — and fifteen years without an accepted record is why it sits in the historic column here, despite a higher total than several of the species above it.

Quick ID: The smallest hummingbird in the United States, with a short tail that sits about level with the wingtips at rest. Adult males show magenta streaks radiating down a white throat rather than a solid gorget. Females are told from female Rufous by size, the short tail, very little rufous in the tail, and a pale buff wash spread evenly across the breast rather than concentrated on the flanks.

Rivoli's Hummingbird

Arkansas's only record of this large Southwestern species: an adult male photographed near Arkadelphia, Clark County, on July 18, 1993, under the species' former name, Magnificent Hummingbird. Tumlison and Kannan's compilation is blunt about what's happened since — "No new records" — and the Audubon Society checklist agrees. Thirty-three years and counting.

Quick ID: One of the largest hummingbirds on the continent — roughly double the mass of a Ruby-throated, with a long, almost straight bill. Adult males can look all-dark until the light reveals an emerald throat and violet crown; size and bill length alone rule out every other species on Arkansas's list.

Arkansas Hummingbirds at a Glance

One species accounts for nearly all of Arkansas's hummingbird activity: Ruby-throated peaks at 38% of statewide checklists, while every other confirmed species tops out under half a percent. That gap is too wide for a shared bar chart to show anything useful — it would be one full bar and ten invisible slivers — so here's the same information as a table instead.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many kinds of hummingbirds have been documented in Arkansas?

Eleven, all accepted by the Arkansas Bird Records Committee. Only one, Ruby-throated Hummingbird, nests in the state; two western species, Rufous and Anna's, are real winter visitors; and the remaining eight range from a bird confirmed thirteen times to birds confirmed exactly once, decades ago.

What is the most common hummingbird in Arkansas?

Ruby-throated Hummingbird, by an enormous margin — it peaks at 38% of statewide eBird checklists in early September and 64% around Hot Springs, while no other species in Arkansas reaches even half a percent. From April through early October, a hummingbird anywhere in Arkansas is almost certainly this one.

Is a hummingbird at my Arkansas feeder in December a Ruby-throated?

Probably not. Ruby-throated has no established winter population in Arkansas, and the last stragglers are gone by mid-October. A December bird is most likely a Rufous Hummingbird, the state's regular winter visitor, with Anna's and Black-chinned as the next possibilities — all three are western species that show a genuine winter signal here. Photograph it if you can; a winter hummingbird in Arkansas is worth reporting to eBird.

What is the rarest hummingbird ever recorded in Arkansas?

Four species share single-record status: Rivoli's Hummingbird (near Arkadelphia, 1993), Buff-bellied Hummingbird (Searcy, winter 1992–93), Allen's Hummingbird (Bryant, 2019), and, by record age, Mexican Violetear's first bird at Fort Smith in 1984 — though that species has since been accepted six more times, so it's a recurring rarity rather than a one-off.

How do you tell a Ruby-throated from a Black-chinned Hummingbird in Arkansas?

In good light, the throat — Ruby-throated's is red, Black-chinned's is black with a thin purple band at the bottom. The trouble is that both can look solid black in shade, and females and immatures are close to inseparable. The most useful mark is wing length: Black-chinned's folded wingtips reach nearly to the tail tip, while Ruby-throated's tail extends clearly past the wings. Season helps too — Arkansas's Black-chinned signal is a winter one, and Ruby-throated is gone by mid-October.

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 for Arkansas specifically, not a generic one. Most identification content treats a single-breeder state like Arkansas as a one-species state, and that misses what's actually interesting here: two real winter visitors, a tropical wanderer accepted seven times, and a set of rarities whose record histories are published in enough detail that this page can tell you exactly how many, and when.

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 Arkansas's main regions — Pulaski for Little Rock, Washington for Fayetteville and the Ozarks, Garland for Hot Springs and the Ouachitas, and Crittenden for the Delta — cross-checked against the Arkansas Bird Records Committee's current review list and the Committee's accepted-record histories as compiled in Tumlison and Kannan's two 2023 papers in the Journal of the Arkansas Academy of Science.

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 is called a repeatable visitor rather than a one-off, we check its week-by-week signal for recurrence across separate years, then check it against the Committee's own record counts and dates. That's what puts Rufous and Anna's in the winter-visitor column — both have passed ten accepted records and been removed from the Committee's review list — and what keeps Calliope in the historic column despite six records, because none has been accepted since 2010.

What makes the "at a glance" table honest. Ruby-throated dominates Arkansas's checklists so completely that a shared-scale frequency chart would show nothing beyond one bar, so this page states the dominance directly and gives every other species its real record count instead. Timing — when Ruby-throated arrives, peaks, and leaves — is the calendar's job and lives on the Arkansas hummingbird calendar.

What's original here. The tier grouping follows the Committee's own review-list threshold rather than a generic rare/common split — including the fact that Black-chinned has quietly crossed it. Every rarity's status traces to a specific published record, 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, which is exactly why Arkansas's one Allen's record is a photographed adult male.

Sources

• eBird bar chart data, Cornell Lab of Ornithology — Arkansas statewide plus Pulaski, Washington, Garland, and Crittenden counties, 2016–2025.
• Arkansas Bird Records Committee, Rare Birds of Arkansas review list — Arkansas Audubon Society. Source for review-list status on every species on this page.
• Tumlison, R. & Kannan, R. (2023). Rare Birds in Arkansas: Historical Observations and New Records. Journal of the Arkansas Academy of Science 77:98–108. Source for every rare-species record count, date, and location.
• Tumlison, R. & Kannan, R. (2023). New Species of Birds Reported in Arkansas Since 2009. Journal of the Arkansas Academy of Science 77:91–97. Source for the Allen's Hummingbird record.
• Doster, R. et al. (2006). First record of Broad-billed Hummingbird in Arkansas. Journal of the Arkansas Academy of Science 60:177–178.
• Arkansas Birds, Fall 2025 and Spring 2022 — Arkansas Audubon Society quarterly newsletter. Source for the 2025 Broad-billed and 2022 Anna's records.
• The Snipe, March–May 2021 — Audubon Society of Central Arkansas. Source for the 2021 Vilonia Anna's record.
• Arkansas Audubon Society Checklist of Arkansas Birds (2015) — source for the Calliope, Rivoli's, and Buff-bellied status codes.
• Arkansas Game and Fish Commission — Ruby-throated Hummingbird breeding status.
• All About Birds, Cornell Lab of Ornithology — source for identification field marks.