Bird Profile

Anna's Hummingbird

Anna's Hummingbird does not leave for the winter, which is why winter hummingbird feeding is an ordinary chore from San Diego to Vancouver and a puzzle everywhere else.

Anna's Hummingbird (Calypte anna) is a stocky, green and gray hummingbird about 4 inches (10 cm) long, and it is the reason people in Seattle and Vancouver stand at the kitchen window at 7 a.m. in January swapping a thawed feeder for a frozen one. It does not migrate. It is the only hummingbird most of the West Coast has in midwinter, and in much of that range it is present every single day of the year.

That resident habit changes the whole job. Feeding a Ruby-throated Hummingbird is a summer activity with a clear start and finish. Feeding Anna's is a year-round commitment, and in a cold snap it becomes a twice-daily one.

This profile covers identification, the range expansion that carried the species from southern California to British Columbia, the nectar recipe, the specific methods that keep a feeder liquid below freezing, the torpor that gets these birds through the night, and their startlingly early nesting.

How to identify an Anna's Hummingbird#

Adult male: metallic bronze-green above, gray below with green flanks, and a gorget of iridescent rose-pink to magenta that extends up over the crown and out to the sides of the throat. That full pink head is unique among hummingbirds in the United States. Like all iridescence it looks black or dull bronze until the light comes from the right angle.

Female: green above, grayish below, usually with a small patch of red or pink spots in the center of the throat, and white tips to the outer tail feathers.

Juvenile: similar to the female, plainer, often with a lightly speckled throat. Young males acquire pink feathers unevenly and can look patchy for months.

Anna's is noticeably chunkier and shorter-billed than the other common western hummingbirds, and it perches a great deal, often high and in the open, which is not typical hummingbird behavior.

Anna's or one of the other western hummingbirds#

Season is the fastest tool on the West Coast. A hummingbird at a Portland or Vancouver feeder in December is an Anna's until proven otherwise.

From southern California to British Columbia#

Anna's Hummingbird was, a century ago, largely a bird of northern Baja California and the southern California coast. It now breeds north through Oregon and Washington into coastal British Columbia, with records further north still, and inland into Arizona and parts of Nevada.

The expansion is usually attributed to two human contributions: widespread planting of exotic winter-flowering ornamentals such as eucalyptus and various garden shrubs, and the enormous number of nectar feeders maintained year-round in West Coast yards. Those two things together created a winter food supply where none existed, and the birds followed it north.

That history is worth sitting with, because it means the feeders are not decoration. In the northern part of the range, a network of maintained feeders is part of what makes winter survival possible for a population that would otherwise not be there. Practical regional context is in feeding birds in the Pacific Northwest and feeding birds in Southern Canada.

Nectar and feeders#

Four parts water to one part plain white granulated sugar. One cup water to a quarter cup sugar, stirred until dissolved. No red dye, no honey, no brown or raw sugar, no artificial sweetener. This is the same mix in January as in July, and the reasoning is set out in the hummingbird nectar recipe.

Use a small saucer or basin hummingbird feeder rather than a big inverted bottle. Saucers drip less, are easier to scrub, and hold a smaller volume, which suits a winter routine where you are emptying and refilling constantly anyway. Design trade-offs are covered in choosing a hummingbird feeder.

Cleaning frequency still tracks temperature, and cold weather is the easy part of the year: in genuinely cold conditions the nectar keeps for a week or more, while a hot inland summer day may require daily changes. The full schedule and the scrubbing method are in cleaning a hummingbird feeder.

Keeping the feeder from freezing#

Sugar water freezes at a slightly lower temperature than plain water, in practice starting to slush somewhere around 27°F (-3°C) and freezing solid below that. Here is what actually works, roughly in order of reliability.

Put the feeder out at first light. Anna's Hummingbirds feed heavily in the first minutes after dawn, when their overnight reserves are gone, and again in the last light before dusk. Those two windows matter more than the middle of the day.

Torpor, and what a cold morning looks like#

Hummingbirds burn energy at a rate no bird of any size can sustain overnight without help. Anna's solution is torpor: a controlled, deep drop in body temperature, with heart rate and breathing slowing dramatically, reducing energy use to a small fraction of normal for the hours of darkness.

The bird chooses a sheltered perch, fluffs out, and effectively powers down. Waking takes time. On a freezing morning an Anna's may sit apparently lifeless, cold to the touch and unresponsive, then shiver itself back to operating temperature over several minutes and fly off as though nothing happened.

This causes a predictable false alarm every winter. A hummingbird found stiff and still at dawn is very often torpid rather than dead or injured. Leave it alone, keep pets away, make sure a thawed feeder is available, and check again in half an hour before doing anything else.

Nesting in midwinter#

Anna's Hummingbirds have one of the earliest breeding seasons of any North American bird. Females start building in December in the southern part of the range, most eggs are laid between late December and April, and fledglings can be out before many migrant species have even started north. The schedule tracks the winter rains and the flowering that follows them.

The nest is a small cup of plant down and spider silk, often decorated with lichen, saddled on a branch or occasionally on a wire, light fixture or other artificial support. Clutches are two white eggs, incubation about 16 days, and young leave the nest at around 20 days. As with all North American hummingbirds, the female does all of it alone.

The practical implication for a feeder is direct: your January visitor may be a female with eggs, feeding herself between incubation bouts in weather that gives her no margin at all.

Voice and the dive display#

Anna's is unusually vocal for a hummingbird. Males sing a long, scratchy, buzzing song from an exposed perch, which is the sound people notice first and usually attribute to an insect.

The display is better. A male climbs to around 100 feet (30 m), then dives at the female or at an intruder and produces a sharp explosive squeak at the bottom of the arc, made by air passing through the tail feathers rather than by the voice. He may repeat it for many minutes. It is one of the most striking things a small yard in California or Oregon can offer, and it happens in the middle of winter.

A winter feeder routine that works#

• Keep the mix at 4 parts water to 1 part white sugar all year.
• Run two feeders and swap them at dawn and dusk once nights drop below about 30°F (-1°C).
• Hang under an eave, close to the house, out of the wind and away from open sky.
• Put the feeder out before first light, not after breakfast.
• Wash properly every change in warm weather, and at least weekly in cold.
• Leave one dense evergreen shrub near the feeder unpruned for roosting.
• Plant something that flowers in winter, following native plants for birds, so the birds are not relying on you alone.

The rest of the year, an Anna's feeder is the same job as any other hummingbird feeder, and the general playbook is in how to attract hummingbirds.