Where Your Hummingbirds Are Spending the Winter Right Now (State by State Map)

Your feeder went quiet in September. Your summer hummingbird didn't stay because the nectar ran out or one night got chilly. It left on an internal clock — and it's almost certainly somewhere between southern Mexico and Panama right now. So if a hummingbird shows up at your feeder this December, it almost certainly isn't the bird you fed all summer. Across much of the Southeast, it may not even be an eastern species. And one of them — banded in a Florida backyard one winter — turned up the following summer on an island in Alaska. The straight-line distance between those two points is roughly three and a half thousand miles. In this video, we go zone by zone across the map to find out where your hummingbirds actually are this winter — and what your feeder should be doing about it: why the warning that leaving your feeder up past Labor Day will trap hummingbirds here is a myth that Bob Sargent of the Hummer/Bird Study Group spent years debunking, why winter banding in the Southeast has documented more than a dozen hummingbird species that older field guides never showed east of the Mississippi, and why UC Berkeley researchers found that feeders — not warming winters — best explain how Anna's Hummingbirds pushed their range hundreds of miles north in just a couple of decades. You'll learn: • Why a hummingbird sitting completely still on a cold morning with puffed feathers isn't dying — and why bringing it inside is the wrong move • Why the winter hummingbird on the Gulf coast is quite likely a Rufous coming down from the Pacific Northwest, not a late Ruby-throat — and why it may have been there before • Why most winter Rufous Hummingbirds in the Southeast are females or young birds that look almost identical to a female Ruby-throat — and what to look for on yours • Why the Rufous Hummingbird has lost an estimated two-thirds of its population since 1970 — and what a December sighting in your yard is actually worth reporting • The zone-by-zone feeder guide: what to keep up, when to keep it up, and the cheapest fix for a feeder that freezes overnight The feeder that went quiet wasn't a sign something went wrong. It was a migration working exactly as it should — and depending on where you live, what shows up next could be the farthest-traveled bird in your yard all year. Subscribe for more science-backed looks at what's really happening outside your window. Comment below: what state are you in, and what month did you see your last hummingbird this year?