A female ruby-throated hummingbird approaches a feeder. Elise Amendola/Associated Press

Every spring, Maine Audubon gets inundated with questions asking “when should we put our hummingbird feeders up?” and every fall, typically in September, we get asked “when can our feeders come down?” So, it is time for our semi-annual focus on hummingbird feeders.

All summer long, Maine has been home to ruby-throated hummingbirds that migrate long distances from their wintering areas in Central America to take advantage of our seasonal abundance of resources (flowers and insects) to give them the greatest chance of reproductive success. Now that the days are getting shorter, and the air cooler, those birds are fueling up and heading south.

How are they fueling up? Spotted jewelweed, or touch-me-not (Impatiens capensis), is a great native flower that they favor, with its orange-red irregular (tubular) flower. Many people also put out hummingbird feeders with sugar water to attract these birds close to their homes. Hummingbird numbers really start to plummet through September, and while you might be tempted to take your feeder in because you are not getting daily visitors, I’m here to encourage you to keep it up.

Despite most ruby-throated hummingbirds clearing out, we do get stragglers that linger well into October, and providing them with a clean feeder can be a welcome and perhaps life-saving stop in a landscape becoming increasingly barren of wildflowers. Every year we get reports of ruby-throated hummingbirds through October, less so in November, and in 2016 there was one that lingered in a South Portland yard until mid-December, making it Maine’s only record of ruby-throated hummingbirds during a Christmas Bird Count. Interestingly, that bird was found foraging on pineapple sage (Salvia elegans), a non-native species in Maine, but one that it would probably be feeding on in Mexico at that time.

We only expect ruby-throated hummingbirds in Maine throughout the summer. In the fall, we are increasingly seeing western hummingbirds here. The most common of these, while still very rare, is the rufous hummingbird. As the name implies, these do have more rufous or reddish colors, and are in a different genus than ruby-throated, called selasphorus, which means “light-bearing” – a great name for hummingbirds. Along with rufous, there are other selasphorus hummingbirds that we should keep a lookout for, like the very similar-looking Allen’s hummingbird, or the diminutive Calliope hummingbird.

In the last few decades, rufous hummingbirds have been overwintering in the southeastern United States, while historically they would travel farther south into southwestern Mexico. The birds that winter farther north are more likely to reach their breeding grounds earlier in the spring, likely occupying better territories and having higher reproductive success, and passing on their genes that perhaps made that choice to winter farther east to begin with. Researchers have been banding many of these individuals, putting small metal bands with unique identifiers on their legs so those birds can be identified if seen at another place or time, and showing that these birds are being successful and returning to the east in multiple years. We have a video of this process, working with a licensed bird bander, on Maine Audubon’s YouTube channel.

In Maine, rufous hummingbirds are being found almost annually, with most records of birds being discovered at feeders in mid-October through November. We have two documented records of a Calliope hummingbird, from Oct. 6, 2005 on Monhegan Island, and Oct. 23, 2008 in Blue Hill. And in 2022, a broad-tailed hummingbird was seen in Freeport, the first record for all of New England. This tiny bird stuck around from Nov. 5 through Dec. 23, even making it through a snowstorm.

As a reminder, the ideal hummingbird food is a mix of one part sugar to four parts water. Use refined white sugar, nothing else, nothing fancy, as other ingredients can be harmful. So keep those feeders clean, filled and available. Just because our ruby-throated hummingbirds are gone doesn’t mean the feeders won’t be visited by another species passing through. And make sure you let us know if you get any late visitors at  naturalist@maineaudubon.org.

Have you got a nature or wildlife question of your own? It doesn’t have to be about birds! Email questions to ask@maineaudubon.org and visit maineaudubon.org to learn more about birding, native plants, and programs and events focusing on Maine wildlife and habitat. Doug and other naturalists lead free bird walks on Thursday mornings, 7 to 9 am, at Maine Audubon’s Gilsland Farm Audubon Sanctuary in Falmouth.