Hummingbirds are southeast Arizona’s real royalty. The combination of wet weather and a green landscape full of flowers allows hummingbirds to thrive in July and August.  The region even calls itself  the hummingbird capital of the United States.

The mountains also help explain the variety of hummingbirds. The local ranges are, in a sense, extensions of the mountain ranges of northern Mexico, allowing birds that are more common farther south to move north into southeast Arizona. These ranges are often called Sky Islands. They rise out of the desert floor like islands from the sea and provide layers of cooler oak woodland and mountain pine at higher elevations.

Some hummingbirds spend the summers here, and early migrants are passing through in early August.  So when the monsoons arrive and everything turns green, the hummingbirds of the Sky Islands get to feast on an abundance of nectar and insects.