Birds of Central Oklahoma

All birds Hummingbirds

Ruby-throated Hummingbird, adult male
Adult male Photo by Paul Danese. CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Ruby-throated Hummingbird

Archilochus colubris

Here April to September.

Recorded by Russ Wigh. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0, via xeno-canto, trimmed and volume evened out.

Look for

  1. Males have a throat that looks black until the sun hits it. Then it flashes bright red.
  2. A shiny green back and head.
  3. Females have a pale, whitish throat and white tips on the outer tail feathers.

A little about it

Hummingbirds get here in early April. You'll see the most in August and September, when they eat a lot to put on weight for the long trip south. Males leave first, and by the middle of October almost all of them are gone.

A hummingbird can hover in one spot, fly backward, and even fly upside down. To hover at a flower, it beats its wings more than 50 times a second.

It sips nectar with its long tongue and catches tiny bugs, sometimes right out of spider webs. To feed them at home, ask a grown-up to help mix 1 part sugar with 4 parts boiled water. Never use honey or red food coloring.

The nest is a tiny cup, about as big as half a walnut shell. The female makes it from spider webs and soft plant fluff, with bits of lichen on the outside. She lays 2 white eggs, each about the size of a navy bean.

Fun fact

These birds are so light that it takes 9 of them to weigh 1 ounce. Even so, some fly all the way across the Gulf of Mexico when they go south.

When it's here

Taller bars mean more sightings. Most often seen in September.

How big

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3 to 3½ inches. Much smaller than a sparrow. Hummingbirds are Oklahoma's smallest birds.

Where to look

Flower gardens and the edges of woods. Feeders in yards bring them in close, and so do red flowers shaped like tubes.

  • At feeders
  • Yards and parks
  • In the woods

People have spotted it at Lake Thunderbird State Park, Stinchcomb Wildlife Refuge, Martin Park Nature Center.

Could it be something else?

  • Black-chinned Hummingbird

    It lives mostly in far western Oklahoma, but some visit feeders in other parts of the state. The male's throat is black, edged with a shiny purple band. A male Ruby-throat's throat flashes red in the sun.

  • Young Ruby-throated Hummingbird

    Young ones look like females, with pale throats. Then young males start to get a few red feathers on the throat.

More photos

Ruby-throated Hummingbird, female
Female Photo by Dmitry Mozzherin. CC BY, via iNaturalist.

Where these facts come from