Hummingbirds of Alaska

Each April, the Southeast Alaska Discovery Center in Ketchikan becomes the hub of the Alaska Hummingbird Festival — a month-long celebration of the Rufous Hummingbird's return to the northernmost hummingbird range in the world. Rufous Hummingbirds migrate up the Pacific Coast from their Mexican wintering grounds, arriving in Ketchikan and the greater Tongass National Forest in April to breed through the summer. Festival activities include guided bird walks, live banding demonstrations, a juried art show, and family education programs — all free to the public. The surrounding Tongass National Forest, the largest national forest in the United States, provides the ancient temperate rainforest backdrop that makes Alaska hummingbird encounters feel truly wild and extraordinary.

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The Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center, just 12 miles from downtown Juneau, offers one of the world's most dramatic wildlife photography settings: the chance to photograph a Rufous Hummingbird hovering at fireweed blossoms in the foreground of a living glacier. Rufous Hummingbirds arrive in Southeast Alaska from April through August, frequenting the flowering currant, salmonberry, and fireweed that bloom in succession around the glacier's moraines and the surrounding Tongass National Forest. Juneau Audubon Society confirms Rufous Hummingbirds are frequent visitors to Southeast feeders from April to August, with Anna's Hummingbirds increasingly present year-round as their range expands northward. The combination of glacier scenery, old-growth rainforest, and vibrant hummingbird activity makes this an utterly singular destination.

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