Audublog

Rufous Hummingbird buzzing through on way to parts north

Everyone likes hummingbirds, right? Well we're getting a particularly cool one coming through California right now. It's the Rufous Hummingbird. It's a brilliant bird, orange in the male, orange and green in the female. At the moment, it's passing through California on its way from Central Mexico where it winters to the Pacific Northwest and Canada where it breeds. The Rufous Hummingbird has a strange migration, because it doesn't necessarily come back the way it came. While it will go northward along the coast, it typically comes back southward through Idaho, Colorado and New Mexico. So get a good look in the spring while you can.

Check out the maps below the fold (photo by USFWS):

If we look at the eBird maps from January, we don't see too much going on for Rufous Hummingbird:

But then we see a few more sightings in February:

And then, in the first few weeks of March, things are really picking up:

Now take a look at April of last year to see where this is all headed:

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