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And so it begins—Juvenile Male Rufous Hummingbird pointed toward Mexico.

July 22, 2026

Morning dew drips from the metal roof over my head and splashes on my camera. No matter. After nearly six inches of rain for July, tying a 2015 record, everything is damp. Including the birds. This morning, I’m focused on the hummingbirds, seven species now, and the feeders blur with juvenile wings.

“First violet-crown of the season!” my neighbor, Lucifer’s Mistress, texts.

And just like that, I remember my first. Even after more than 300 sightings.

It was twenty years ago. Alamos, Sonora, Mexico.

Within a half hour of climbing above the Rio Cuchujaqui into the thornscrub, a sudden stillness fell across the woods like a shadow. A white-breasted hummingbird had materialized out of the kapok trees. “A route of evanescence,” as Emily Dickinson might say.

From its perch beneath the trees, its eyes stared through me with a look of an animal holding something wild in its feathered being, every wondrous rachis and barb, every flawless interlocking barbule, and the whole world in its grasp. My existence turned inward.

The bird made my blood rise, made me feel a connection with something unexpected. This was a narrative without a beginning or an end. A rapture. The bird made me believe in the miraculous.

But this morning, I have my own first. A flare of brilliant gold and a rufous hummingbird appears at the feeders. This one is a juvenile male fresh from a nest in Alaska or British Columbia heading south to wintering grounds he’s never seen. Another miracle. And so, the great hummingbird migration begins again.

The young rufous joins the immature blackchins and broadtails and broadbills and I photograph the winged phenomenons. Tiny brains with genetic maps and a mysterious compass pointing the way home.

A juvenile male Black-chinned Hummingbird stops by the yard on its way south from the western US to winter in coastal Mexico. Below is an adult male.

A juvenile male Broad-billed Hummingbird on its way to central Mexico after fledging in the southwest US. An adult male is below.

Of course, there will always be Anna’s Hummingbirds.

While we’re on the subject of hummingbirds, our book, The Great Hummingbird Chase is finished with copyedits and has moved to design, with a pub date of February 9, 2027. Information is now available at the University of Arizona Press website: https://uapress.arizona.edu/book/the-great-hummingbird-chase

Thanks for joining me in the Big Yard! More to come as the fall migration gets underway!

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