Kansas's documented hummingbird list runs to eleven species — tied with Oklahoma, just behind Colorado's twelve, and ahead of Missouri's ten and Nebraska's eight. Two species breed here, three are migrants with a real, mapped geographic pattern across the state, and six are documented rarities ranging from an active, recurring visitor to species that haven't shown up in over twenty years.

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

All 11 documented Kansas hummingbird species, grouped by tier — statewide eBird data, 2016–2025, cross-checked against the Kansas Bird Records Committee's own accepted-record history.

The Hummingbirds You're Most Likely to See

Ruby-throated Hummingbird

Kansas's dominant hummingbird by a wide margin — its statewide eBird frequency peaks near 24% in early September, dwarfing every other species. It's the only hummingbird commonly seen and known to nest across the state, especially in the eastern half; sightings genuinely thin out the farther west you go, since Kansas sits at the western edge of the species' core range. Present from early-to-mid April through early October.

Quick ID: Males flash a brilliant ruby-red throat in good light, but it reads as solid black most of the time — the forked black tail is the more reliable everyday mark. Females have a plain whitish throat and a more rounded, white-tipped tail.

Black-chinned Hummingbird

A genuine breeder, but only in the far southwest corner of the state — Morton County shows a real breeding-season peak near 9% statewide, while the rest of Kansas sees only a thin trace. The Kansas Bird Records Committee reflects this exactly: documentation is required everywhere in the state except southwest Kansas, where it's an established, if localized, breeder.

Quick ID: Males show a velvety black throat, only revealing a thin purple band in direct light — otherwise it just looks solid black. Females are plain and pale-throated, best told apart by white-tipped outer tail feathers and a small white spot behind the eye.

Kansas's Migrants — and a Real West-Kansas Exception

All three species in this tier pass through Kansas rather than staying, but two of them show a genuine geographic split worth knowing about: Broad-tailed and Calliope Hummingbird are both established enough in the far-western counties that the state's records committee doesn't require documentation there, even though they're still reviewable everywhere else. Rufous Hummingbird doesn't have that split — it's simply an uncommon transient statewide.

Rufous Hummingbird

An uncommon but fully accepted transient, documented late July through late fall across both eastern and western counties. It's the one species in this tier that isn't on the Kansas Bird Records Committee's Review List at all — a fully established, non-reviewable species statewide, not just in the west.

Quick ID: Males glow with a fiery orange-red throat and a coppery-orange body — one of the most recognizable hummingbirds in North America. Females and immatures are green above with rusty flanks and rufous patches at the base of the tail.

Broad-tailed Hummingbird

Reviewable statewide except west of I-135/US-81, where it's regular enough not to need documentation. Weekly checklist data backs this up directly — real activity in Morton and Finney counties, both in the far west, against a barely-there 0.23% peak statewide.

Quick ID: Males have a rose-magenta throat and produce a loud, distinctive metallic wing trill in flight — often heard before seen. Females show green throat spotting rather than solid color, with a pale eyering that helps separate her from similar species.

Calliope Hummingbird

The same exemption zone as Broad-tailed — reviewable statewide except west of I-135/US-81. It's also the most frequent of Kansas's three migrant-tier species in the far west, with a real 4.9% peak in Finney County, and 16 accepted statewide records with activity as recent as 2025.

Quick ID: North America's smallest breeding hummingbird, with a hunched posture and short tail. Males have a unique streaked, ray-like magenta throat unlike any other species' solid gorget. Females are tiny even by hummingbird standards, with very little rufous in the tail.

If You're Lucky: The Great Plains Rarities

Six more species have accepted Kansas records, and they split cleanly into two groups. Anna's and Broad-billed Hummingbird both have real, ongoing activity — Anna's with 17 accepted records through 2025, Broad-billed with 5 records as recently as 2022. Allen's, Costa's, Mexican Violetear, and Rivoli's Hummingbird are all genuinely dormant, with nothing recent despite some of them having more than two records on the books.

Anna's Hummingbird

17 accepted Kansas Bird Records Committee records, most recently in 2025 — genuine, continuing activity, even though every report still requires formal documentation. Recent examples include a second-year male at an Oskaloosa feeder in Jefferson County that stayed from mid-November 2023 into January 2024, and an immature male in Garden City, Finney County, in October 2022.

Quick ID: The only North American hummingbird with a fully colored crown as well as throat — males glow rose-pink from head to throat. Females show a central patch of rose-red spotting on an otherwise plain throat, with a stocky, broad-tailed build.

Broad-billed Hummingbird

5 accepted records, most recently in 2022 — a real, if infrequent, pattern with genuinely recent activity, not a decades-old one-off. This is a meaningfully different status from most of Kansas's other rarities, even though it's still a documentation-required Review species.

Quick ID: Named for the field mark that settles it at a glance — a bright red bill tipped in black. Males show a shimmering sapphire-blue throat over an emerald-green body; females are duller, golden-green above and gray below, but carry that same diagnostic red-and-black bill.

Allen's Hummingbird

A single accepted Kansas record, dating back to 1992 — the clearest possible one-off case on this page, with nothing documented in the more than three decades since.

Quick ID: Males glow with a reddish-orange throat and typically a solid green back, giving a mixed orange-and-green look. Females and immatures are green above with rufous-washed flanks and rufous in the tail — plumage so close to female Rufous Hummingbird that Cornell rates the two "very difficult to separate" without an in-hand tail measurement.

Costa's Hummingbird

3 accepted records — more than the usual two-record threshold for this tier, but nothing since 2005. Over 20 years dormant outweighs the slightly higher record count, so this stays a Historic case rather than a recurring one.

Quick ID: Males show an extravagant violet-purple throat that flares out into long points at the sides, almost like a mustache. Females are compact and plain-faced, best told from other small desert hummingbirds by their short tail and a subtle grayish wash rather than the peachy or rufous tones seen on similar species.

Mexican Violetear

Has 2 accepted Kansas records, most recently in 2022 — meeting the usual two-record threshold for this tier. The exact gap between the two records wasn't independently locatable from KBRC's published summary table this pass, which lists only the total count and most recent date. 

Quick ID: A larger hummingbird than the rest of Kansas's list, glittering metallic green overall with a violet-blue patch across the breast and a violet ear patch — the field mark that gives the species its name. Sexes look nearly identical.

Rivoli's Hummingbird

2 accepted records, but nothing since 2004 — over 20 years dormant, the same pattern as Costa's Hummingbird above, just with fewer total records.

Quick ID: One of the largest hummingbirds likely to show up in Kansas. Males are dark overall with a glittering green throat and a violet crown visible in good light; females are green above and grayish below, with limited pale tips in the tail corners rather than the bold white outer-tail markings smaller species show.

Kansas Hummingbirds at a Glance

Ruby-throated Hummingbird's statewide dominance isn't a close call — its eBird frequency peaks near 24%, and every other documented species stays under 1% at its own statewide peak. That gap holds even accounting for the real western-Kansas activity described above, since those numbers only show up clearly at the county level, not statewide. With a gap this wide, a bar chart wouldn't show anything the numbers below don't already say plainly, so this section skips straight to the table.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many hummingbird species have been recorded in Kansas?

Eleven — tied with Oklahoma, just behind Colorado's twelve. Two species breed here, three are migrants with a genuine regional pattern, and six are documented rarities of varying frequency.

What's the only hummingbird that breeds in Kansas?

Ruby-throated Hummingbird breeds statewide, especially in the eastern half. Black-chinned Hummingbird also breeds in Kansas, but only in a narrow strip of the far southwest corner near the Colorado and Oklahoma borders.

Which Kansas hummingbirds are more common in the far west than the rest of the state?

Black-chinned, Broad-tailed, and Calliope Hummingbird all show a real, documented split. The Kansas Bird Records Committee requires documentation for all three statewide except in the far-western counties along the Colorado and Oklahoma borders, where they're established enough not to need it. Weekly checklist data confirms the same pattern — real activity concentrated in Morton and Finney counties, with only a thin trace statewide.

Is Calliope Hummingbird a rare bird in Kansas?

Not in the same sense as the state's true rarities. Calliope is a Kansas Bird Records Committee review species east of the far-western counties, but it's not in the same category as species like Rivoli's or Allen's Hummingbird, which have one or two records total and nothing recent. Calliope has 16 accepted records with activity as recent as 2025.

What's the difference between Broad-billed and Rivoli's Hummingbird's rarity status in Kansas?

Both are review species, but their records tell different stories. Broad-billed has 5 accepted records with the most recent in 2022 — real, if infrequent, ongoing activity. Rivoli's has only 2 accepted records, and nothing since 2004 — more than 20 years dormant.

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 actually show up in my state" — we built this guide to give a direct, sourced answer, not a generic one. Kansas's hummingbird picture is more layered than most general references let on: Black-chinned, Broad-tailed, and Calliope Hummingbird all have a genuine east-west split that a single statewide status can't capture, and even our own writing elsewhere on this site has occasionally described Calliope as a flat "rarity" when its 16-record, still-active pattern is meaningfully different from species like Rivoli's or Allen's, which really have gone dormant for decades. This page draws those lines explicitly, using the Kansas Bird Records Committee's own record-by-record documentation.

How We Created This Guide

Source and scope. eBird checklist data for Kansas, 2016–2025, pulled statewide plus four representative counties — Johnson (Kansas City metro, far northeast), Sedgwick (Wichita, south-central), Finney (Garden City, far southwest), and Morton (the extreme southwest corner, bordering Colorado and Oklahoma, where most of the state's western-exemption species actually show up) — cross-checked against the Kansas Bird Records Committee's (KBRC) own current Review List and Checklist.

How we separate a real pattern from a single well-publicized bird. A species clearing a percentage point in eBird's raw data isn't automatically a real pattern — a single well-photographed rarity can draw enough birders to create a real-looking statistic around one bird. For every species outside Ruby-throated's dominant range, we checked the actual weekly checklist counts behind the numbers, then cross-referenced against KBRC's own Review List, which gives exact accepted-record counts and most-recent-record years per species. That comparison is what surfaced the real geographic split for Black-chinned, Broad-tailed, and Calliope — their thin statewide numbers are misleading on their own, but a genuine regional pattern in Morton and Finney counties matches KBRC's own western exemption zone almost exactly.

What makes the dominance claim honest. Ruby-throated Hummingbird's lead over every other Kansas species isn't a chart-worthy comparison — its statewide eBird frequency clears the next-highest species by more than 23 percentage points at peak, verified directly against the underlying weekly data rather than assumed from general knowledge of the species. With a gap that wide, a bar chart wouldn't add anything the table above doesn't already say.

What's original here. The tiering on this page comes from KBRC's own record-by-record documentation, not a generic "species recorded" list. Within the rare tier specifically, Anna's and Broad-billed Hummingbird's genuinely recent, recurring activity is separated from the four species that have gone truly dormant — including Costa's and Rivoli's Hummingbird, both of which have more than the usual two-record floor but still count as Historic, since more than 20 years have passed since either was last documented.

Sources

• eBird bar chart data, Cornell Lab of Ornithology — Kansas statewide, 2016–2025.
• Kansas Bird Records Committee, Kansas Ornithological Society — source for every rare-species record count and status on this page.
• All About Birds, Cornell Lab of Ornithology — source for identification field marks.