Hummingbird Feeder Timing: Up in Spring, Down in Autumn

The short answer

• Hang the feeder about two weeks before your area's average first arrival. Being early costs a cup of sugar water; being late costs you the birds that pass through and settle elsewhere.
• Take it down two weeks after your last sighting, not on a calendar date. The tail catches late migrants coming from further north.
• Leaving a feeder up does not delay migration. Departure is triggered by shortening day length, and a hummingbird with the urge to go will go past a full feeder.
• On the Pacific coast and in parts of the Southwest, Anna's Hummingbird is resident and feeders stay up all twelve months, including through frosts.
• A 4:1 nectar mix freezes a few degrees below plain water, so in a hard frost the practical answer is two feeders swapped at first light and dusk, not a stronger sugar solution.

Two rules cover almost every hummingbird feeder question, and both are relative to your own yard rather than to a date on a chart.

Up two weeks before your average first arrival. Down two weeks after your last sighting.

Everything below is the detail behind those two sentences.

Spring: hang it before you need it#

Migrating hummingbirds are searching. A bird crossing your neighborhood in the first week of the season is checking flowers, feeders and anything red, and it makes a decision about where to settle within a few days. A feeder that is already up is part of that decision. A feeder hung the day after you see your neighbor's hummingbird is competing with a bird that has already chosen.

The cost asymmetry is what makes this easy. Being two weeks early costs you a cup of sugar water and one wash. Being one week late can cost you the season.

The classic bioclimatic rule of thumb, roughly four days per degree of latitude, will interpolate between bands. Add more for elevation: mountain valleys run well behind the lowlands at the same latitude.

Autumn: the two-week tail#

Take the feeder down two weeks after your last sighting, not on a fixed date. Typical last dates run from mid September in southern Canada, to late September or early October at 40 N, into November on the Gulf Coast.

The reason for the two-week tail is that the birds passing through in late season are usually not your birds. Adult males leave first, then females, then this year's juveniles, and a hummingbird at your feeder in the third week of the season may have started 500 miles north of you. It is crossing unfamiliar ground with a Gulf crossing or a long overland flight ahead, and a working feeder is a real advantage.

The myth, and why it will not die#

The belief is that a feeder left up "keeps birds from migrating" and strands them in a killing frost.

Hummingbird departure is driven by photoperiod, the shortening of day length, which sets off the hormonal and fat-loading changes that precede migration. Food supply is not the trigger. A bird whose internal clock says go will leave a full feeder behind, and a bird still present in November is present for its own reasons, not because your feeder held it there.

The practical version: you cannot trap a hummingbird with sugar water, and you may well be helping a late migrant that needs the calories more than any bird you fed all summer. Other durable feeding myths are collected on bird feeding myths.

The West runs a different calendar#

Anna's Hummingbird is resident along the Pacific coast and through much of the Southwest, has expanded its range north over recent decades, and nests remarkably early, in the depths of winter in parts of that range. Costa's, Allen's and Black-chinned overlap in the same broad area with different timings, and Rufous moves north along the coast in late winter and south through the mountains in late summer.

If you live in that region, the autumn take-down question does not apply. Your feeder is a twelve-month installation, and its hardest month is January.

• Top-tier favorite for: Ruby-throated Hummingbird, Anna's Hummingbird, Baltimore Oriole
• Taken occasionally by: Red-bellied Woodpecker

Note that nectar is not exclusively a hummingbird food. Orioles take it readily and a handful of other species will sample it, which is why an oriole feeder with larger ports and perches is worth running alongside in the East during the summer.

Running nectar in freezing weather#

Where hummingbirds overwinter, the job changes from attracting birds to keeping food available through frost. A 4:1 sugar solution freezes a few degrees below plain water, which buys you a little margin and no more. Slush in the ports is enough to stop a bird feeding.

What works, in order of effort:

1. Two feeders, swapped. The standard solution. Keep one indoors at room temperature. Take the frozen one in at dusk, hang the warm one before first light, because a hummingbird that has spent a long night in torpor needs to feed within minutes of dawn.
2. Insulate the reservoir. A wrap of foam or a sock around the bottle slows the freeze noticeably, as long as the ports stay clear.
3. Add safe heat. A low-wattage outdoor-rated lamp or heat source positioned near, never touching, the reservoir. Anything you use must be rated for outdoor damp use, kept clear of the nectar itself, and never allowed to warm the solution enough to spoil it.
4. Bring it in only overnight, not through the day. Hummingbirds feed all day in cold weather and need the feeder present, especially in the last hour before dark.

Do not treat extra sugar as an antifreeze on your own initiative. The safe, established mix is four parts water to one part plain white sugar, no dye, no honey, no substitutes, and stronger solutions are a subject where local rehabilitators and banders give area-specific advice. Recipe and reasoning on the hummingbird nectar recipe page, and batch sizes on the nectar calculator.

The maintenance that goes with the timing#

Timing gets the birds there. Hygiene keeps them alive.

Washing means hot water and a bottle brush into the reservoir and every port, with no soap residue left behind. Black specks in the nectar or a sour smell mean it went over some time ago.

Two seasonal nuisances arrive with the warm months: ants, which are solved with a water moat and nothing else, and wasps, which are solved by a saucer-style feeder and clean drips rather than by anything you spray. See ants on hummingbird feeders and bees and wasps.

The short version for your calendar#

• Put two dates in your calendar: hang date (two weeks before local arrival) and a reminder to start counting after your last autumn sighting.
• Do not take the feeder down because it is October. Take it down because nothing has visited for two weeks.
• On the Pacific coast, in the low desert Southwest and in parts of the Gulf Coast, where hummingbirds winter, do not take it down at all.

The rest of the year's timing decisions, including oriole feeders and the four dates that carry the whole feeding calendar, are on the bird feeding calendar and the spring feeding page.

Frequently asked questions#

When should I put my hummingbird feeder out?

About two weeks before hummingbirds normally arrive where you live. On the Gulf Coast that means mid to late February, in the Carolinas and Texas early March, in the mid-Atlantic and lower Midwest late March, around the Great Lakes and New England mid April, and in southern Canada late April. The first birds through are searching hard and moving fast, and a feeder that is already up and clean gets found. One that goes up a week after they arrive often gets ignored because they have settled elsewhere.

Will leaving my hummingbird feeder up stop hummingbirds migrating?

No. This is the most persistent myth in bird feeding. Migration is triggered by shortening day length, with hormonal and fat-loading changes that follow from it, and an individual bird ready to leave departs regardless of how much food is in front of it. Birds still at your feeder in late autumn are almost always migrants from further north passing through, and the food you are offering is genuinely useful to them. Leave the feeder up two weeks past your last sighting.

When do I take the hummingbird feeder down in the fall?

Two weeks after you last see a bird. At 40 degrees north that usually falls in mid October, in southern Canada mid to late September, on the Gulf Coast into November. Do not use a fixed calendar date, because late individuals and stragglers moving south vary by weeks from year to year. On the Pacific coast, in the low desert Southwest and in parts of the Gulf Coast, do not take it down at all: resident and overwintering hummingbirds use feeders through the winter.

How do I keep hummingbird nectar from freezing?

Run two feeders and swap them. Keep one indoors, take the cold one in at dusk and hang the warm one before first light, since hummingbirds feed within minutes of dawn after a long cold night. For sustained cold, an insulating wrap around the reservoir, or a safe low-wattage heat source rated for outdoor use and kept well clear of the nectar, extends the working time. Do not add extra sugar as antifreeze without local advice: the safe standard mix stays 4 to 1.

Do hummingbirds stay all winter anywhere in North America?

Yes. Anna's Hummingbird is resident along the Pacific coast and into the Southwest and breeds in midwinter in parts of that range. Several species overwinter in the low desert Southwest and along the Gulf Coast, and vagrant western hummingbirds, Rufous in particular, now regularly winter in the Southeast. If you are in one of those areas, feeders stay up year round, and in freezing weather they become a service worth taking seriously.

A hummingbird turned up at my feeder in December. What should I do?

Keep the feeder running, keep the nectar unfrozen, and report the sighting to your state or provincial birding list or a local banding project. Out-of-season hummingbirds in the East and Midwest are usually western species, most often Rufous, that are physiologically capable of handling cold if food is available. Do not try to catch or contain the bird, and do not change the nectar recipe. A working feeder and a report to people who study these birds is the useful response.

Sources and further reading

1. Ruby-throated Hummingbird Cornell Lab of Ornithology, All About Birds Migration timing and range
2. Anna's Hummingbird Cornell Lab of Ornithology, All About Birds Year-round western residency and winter breeding
3. Attract Hummingbirds National Audubon Society Feeder timing, nectar recipe and the migration-delay myth
4. Feeding Birds Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Project FeederWatch Nectar feeder practice and cleaning frequency