Black-chinned Hummingbird

– Gorget (throat) black, lower half iridescent purple. May appear all black.
– Dark throat with white ring-around-the collar.
– Back is a dull metalic green.
– Underparts dull grayish white.
– Sides darker, with green wash.
– Tail mostly black.
– Length: 4 in.  Wingspan: 4 in.

– Female‘s back is a dull metalic green.
– White chin and throat, marked with dark streaks.
– Underparts dull grayish white.
– Tail greenish or blackish.

None.

Juveniles are similar to adult female, juvenilw male may gave a few purple throat feathers.

Usually found in arid environments, including desert washes, scrub, or chaparral habitats; also frequents open woodlands, riparian woodlands, and parks or gardens.

Nectar, a few insects for protein.

Photograph © Glenn Bartley.

The Bent Life History series provides this description of the courtship display:

“The female was perched on a dead, horizontal limb about five feet from the ground and the male took flight from a position approximately twenty feet above her on tho twig of a cottonwood, against the trunk of which I was quietly resting. With a bold sweep and a whizzing noise made by flight, which resembled that of the Costa Hummer except that the tone was not so intense, he passed very close to her and headed up to a point about fifteen feet above. There, while the upward motion died until a complete stop was reached, be seemed to pat his wings together underneath him, causing a sound much like that of a bathing bird flopping its wings In the water after they have become thoroughly saturated. After a second downward swing, with the whizzing noise, he rose to another point about fifteen feet up, where again the wing flopping performance was repeated. This U-shaped figure was repeated five different times, and, at each stop at the apex, the flopping of wings was indulged in, after which the bird again sought his perch on the cottonwood above his mate. I was close enough almost to hear his wing heats as he sped to and fro, and I watched the pair for three minutes, when they both flew off of their own will, without being disturbed. At no time during the minute and a half duration of the nuptial flight was there any vocal demonstration, though both birds were rather vociferous when perched.

Breeding range extends from south-central British Columbia, Washington, Idaho, and northwestern Montana south (and east) to northern Baja California, northern Mexico, and southern Texas. Migrates to Mexico for the winter.

More information:

Bent Life History

Visit the Bent Life History for extensive additional information on the Black-chinned Hummingbird.

Wing Shape

The shape of a bird’s wing is often an indication of its habits and behavior. Fast flying birds have long, pointed wings. Soaring birds have long, broad wings. Different songbirds will have a slightly different wing shape. Some species look so much alike (Empidonax flycatchers) that scientists sometimes use the length of specific feathers to confirm a species’ identification.

• Male, Washington, May
• From below
• Female, Washington, July
• From below

Wing images from the University of Puget Sound, Slater Museum of Natural History

Although most birds migrate to Mexico for the winter, this close relative of the Ruby-throated Hummingbird may also winter in southern Texas and along the Gulf coast to Florida.

In many cultures, hummingbirds symbolize happiness, luck, good intentions, healing, help, and renewal.

Various high chips and ticks.

Will visit hummingbird feeders filled with sugar water.

Nests in trees, usually up to 4-8 or more feet above the ground. Nest is a cup-shaped structure built from plant down, leaves, and spider’s silk.

Number: Usually 1-3.
Color: white.

Incubation and fledging:
– Young hatch at about 13-16 days.
– Young are capable of flight when they are about 21 days old.

Published by the Smithsonian Institution between the 1920s and the 1950s, the Bent life history series of monographs provide an often colorful description of the birds of North America. Arthur Cleveland Bent was the lead author for the series. The Bent series is a great resource and often includes quotes from early American Ornithologists, including Audubon, Townsend, Wilson, Sutton and many others.

Bent Life History for the Black-chinned Hummingbird – the common name and sub-species reflect the nomenclature in use at the time the description was written.

This active little hummer is accredited with a rather wide breeding range, from southern British Columbia and western Montana to northern Mexico and western Texas, but it 15 comparatively rare over much of this range. It is most abundant in the southern portions of the range, especially in southern California, southern Utah, Arizona, and portions of New Mexico. In the dry foothills and canyons of the Upper Austral Zone in this general region, it is one of the commonest of the hummingbirds. Dr. Joseph Grinnell (1898) says that in Los Angeles County it is a “summer resident from the lowlands to the summit of the mountains, but most abundant in the foothill regions, where it breeds in the cañons in some years by the thousands. * * * By the first of July, when the vegetation of the foothills becomes dry, and flowers cease to bloom, the Hummingbirds are found in countless thousands at higher elevations (6000 to 8500 feet) where summer is just dawning.”

He says elsewhere (1914), referring to the Colorado Valley: “At Ehrenberg the last week of March and opposite Cibola the first week in April, the species was abundant in the desert washes, feeding about the profusely blossoming palo verdes. * * *

“The males were more seldom seen, and the females became closely restricted to the willow strip along the river, in which association we were convinced that this was the only species of hummingbird breeding. The males were not seen in the willows, but only in the mesquite association and up the desert washes. The females foraged everywhere except on the desert mesa, but nested exclusively in the willows.”

In southern Arizona we found the black-chinned hummingbird to be the most abundant species of the family; its favorite haunts seemed to be about the mouths of the canyons, where a line of sycamores followed the underground course of a mountain stream out onto the plains; it was also commonly found in the small patches of willows along the dry washes, where water had formerly flowed, or where, probably, an underground supply still kept the trees and shrubs alive. It was not seen in the mountains above 6,000 feet.

Courtship: The courtship flight of the black-chinned hummingbird is much like that of the closely related eastern ruby-throated hummer, consisting mainly of the long, swinging, pendulum like swoops, with some variations. Laurence M. Huey (1924) describes it very well as follows:

The female was perched on a dead, horizontal limb about five feet from the ground and the male took flight from a position approximately twenty feet above her on tho twig of a cottonwood, against the trunk of which I was quietly resting. With a bold sweep and a whizzing noise made by flight, which resembled that of the Costa Hummer except that the tone was not so intense, he passed very close to her and headed up to a point about fifteen feet above. There, while the upward motion died until a complete stop was reached, be seemed to pat his wings together underneath him, causing a sound much like that of a bathing bird flopping its wings in the water after they have become thoroughly saturated. After a second downward swing, with the whizzing noise, he rose to another point about fifteen feet up, where again the wing flopping performance was repeated. This U-shaped figure was repeated five different times, and, at each stop at the apex, the flopping of wings was indulged in, after which the bird again sought his perch on the cottonwood above his mate. I was close enough almost to hear his wing heats as he sped to and fro, and I watched the pair for three minutes, when they both flew off of their own will, without being disturbed. At no time during the minute and a half duration of the nuptial flight was there any vocal demonstration, though both birds were rather vociferous when perched.

Mrs. Bailey (1923) saw some “giving their aerial courtship dance from among the mesquites. One that I watched varied the usual triangulation by first flying back and forth horizontally across the face of a bush, then making narrow V’s with the point at the bush, followed by wide-sweeping swings out over the mesquites as if from pure spirits.”

Robert S. Woods (1927b) writes:

The shuttling of the Black-chinned Hummingbird, which follows a path like a narrow figure 8 lying on one side, has often been mentioned in accounts of the species. Its other form of nuptial flight most closely resembles that of the Rufous Hummingbird, just described [a swooping dive, punctuated at the bottom of its course by what might be described as a tremulant squeak or a rapid succession of about four thin, vibrant notes], but the vocalization is more prolonged and of rather different character—a long-drawn, pulsating, plaintive, liquid note, probably the most pleasing utterance of any of our Hummingbirds. The heavy droning sound of its flight, so noticeable in the shuttling movement, is heard in this case only while momentum is first being gained on the downward swing. The shuttling flight, it may be noted, is practiced almost solely by those species in which the wings of the male are specially modified for noise-making purposes.

Nesting: Major Bendire (1895) gives a rather comprehensive account of the nesting of black-chinned hummingbirds, and I cannot do better than to quote his remarks. He says:

Throughout the greater part of their range, it rarely begins laying before May 1, and the season is at its height through this month, while second or possibly third sets are found up to the latter part of July, and occasionally still later. The nest is readily distinguishable from that of the Ruby-throated Hummingbird by not being covered on the outside with lichens. It is composed of plant down, varying in color from white to buff; the latter is obtained from the under side of the young leaves of the sycamore, the former probably from willows, milkweed, or thistles. These materials are well worked together, and the outside of the nest is thickly coated with spider web. In an occasional specimen a small leaf or two, or a few flower blossoms of the oak are worked in the outer walls. In a specimen from Marfa, Texas, the outside is well covered with small flower spikes, the male aments of a species of oak, hiding the inner lining completely.

He mentions a beautiful nest that “is mainly composed of white willow down, mixed on the outside with a few small leaves and the scales from the willow buds.”

These are firmly held in place by an abundance of spider web, with which it is also securely attached to the little fork in which it is saddled. The outer diameter of this nest is about 13/8 inches by 1 inch in depth; the inner cup is 1 inch in diameter by five eighths of an inch deep; and while some specimens before me are a trifle larger, others are considerably smaller. Nests taken in the Sequoia National Park, in Tulare County, California, have perceptibly thicker walls than those from the warmer lowlands, and are also correspondingly larger. The nests are either saddled on a small, drooping branch or on a fork, one or two of the smaller twigs composing this usually being incorporated in the walls and holding it securely in place. Many of the nests resemble small, fine sponges, and are equally elastic, readily regaining their shape after being squeezed together. They are generally placed from 4 to 8 feet from the ground, mostly in the shrubbery found near small creeks or springs, and frequently their nests overhang the water or the dry creek bed. Alders, cottonwoods, oak, sycamore, laurel, and willows are most often selected for nesting sites, as well as young orchards, especially apple and orange trees, where they are available.

Frank Stephens wrote to Bendire that he “found a set of eggs of this species * * * laid in a nest of the House Finch, Carpodacus maxicanus frontalis. No lining had been added, or any other changes made; the bird evidently was in haste to lay, her nest, perhaps, having been suddenly destroyed.”

Nests have also been found in a pear tree in an orchard, in a wild grape vine, in a tree-rose in a garden, and even on the stalks of various weeds; Dr. Grinnell (1914) mentions one that “was four feet above the ground on a slanting dead stalk of arrowweed beneath a large spreading willow.” John McB. Robertson (1933) reports a nest in a most unusual location. It was built in the loop of a small rope that hung from a board in his garage. The nest rested on a knot at the bottom of the loop and was supported on opposite sides by the rope, to which it was securely tied with spider web; it was made of plant down and covered on the outside with stamens of eucalyptus blossoms. “Other objects to be seen in it are several tiny bits of eucalyptus bark, a scrap of dry leaf, several long human hairs, a small feather that is probably from a Linnet, a pair of bracts from a plant that furnished down, and a seed of alfilaria.”

The nest of the black-chinned hummingbird is an exquisite structure, semiglobular in shape, or little more than half of a sphere, as if less than the upper half of the globe had been removed; it is deeply hollowed, and the rim is curved inward at the top, a wise provision of the builder to prevent the eggs or small young from falling out, as the supporting twig or weed stalk is swayed by the wind. It is firmly felted with plant down of various colors, mainly in different shades of buff, from “cartridge buff” to “pale pinkish buff” or “cinnamon-buff”; an occasional nest, in some 40 that I have examined, is made of the buffy-white or pure white down of the willow. The elastic, spongy structure is well reinforced and firmly bound to the supporting twigs with spider web, giving it much greater strength than it appears to have. Its durability is remarkable for such a frail-looking nest, as frequently a new nest is built on the well-preserved remains of a nest of the previous season.

The nest seems hardly large enough at first to contain even the small young, but, as the young increase in size, the elastic top expands, as Bayard H. Christy (1932) so gracefully portrays it: “As the young continue to grow a beautiful contrivance comes into play; the surrounding wall of the nest becomes as it were. a living integument about the chicks; it expands with their growth; its rim yields to their little strugglings; its sphere opens like a flower-bud; until the little birds, all but ready to take flight, remain resting upon the full blown corolla.”

Mrs. Bailey (1896) gives the following account of the nest building: “‘The peculiar feature of the building was the quivering motion of the bird in moulding. When the material was placed she moulded the nest like a potter, twirling tremulously around against the sides, sometimes pressing so hard she ruffled up the feathers of her breast. She shaped the cup as if it were a piece of clay. To round the outside she would sit on the rim and lean over, smoothing the sides with her bill, often with the same tremulous motion. When she wanted to turn around in the nest she lifted herself by whirring her wings.”

In southern Texas this hummingbird sometimes builds its nest at greater heights above the ground than mentioned above; Van Tyne and Sutton (1937) report two such nests found in Brewster County; one was “about twenty feet from the ground on a slender willow branch,” and the other was “fully thirty feet from the ground in a gigantic cottonwood.”

James B. Dixon writes to me from Escondido, Calif.: “Like most of the hummingbirds they are sometimes found nesting in very unexpected locations, such as on a porch where doors were swinging open at all hours of the day or night, on a steel rod poked into the roof of a blacksmith shop where men were busy at an anvil, and on an old piece of haywire stuck into a chink in the wall of a barn. Two locations seem to be preferred in the wilder places, the most popular being a long, meandering canyon filled with scrawny sycamores in the bottom and located where the surrounding hillsides are covered with flowering sage; the other location is in the dense willow thickets, locally known as willow montes, which border running streams or lakes. Here the black-chinned hummingbird is found breeding in large numbers, and it is not. unusual to find a nest on the average of every hundred feet in such locations. I have found as high as three-storied nests of his bird, where apparently the bird had returned to the same nest for three successive seasons and built a new nest on the foundations of the previous year’s home.”

The nest shown on plate 58 illustrates the durability of the apparently fragile material used in its construction; it was composed exclusively of plant down firmly bound with cobwebs, and had served for the rearing of two young, meanwhile experiencing three 11-hour overhead irrigations.

Roy W. Quillin writes to me from Bexar County, Tex.: “All the nests I have seen were made of plant down of various colors and plastered on the outside with tiny lichens, very much like the nest of the ruby throat. They are totally different from nests of this species that I have examined from California. The fact that the nest of the blackchin, in this locality, is much like that of the ruby throat and the fact that the latter species is in migration here when the blackchin is nesting have caused records of the nesting of the ruby throat to be printed for Bexar County. I do not think it nests here.”

Eggs: The black-chinned hummingbird lays ordinarily two eggs, but several sets of three have been found, and occasionally a single egg is incubated. The eggs are much like those of the ruby-throated hummingbird but average a trifle smaller; they are about elliptical oval, pure white, and without gloss. Often two and sometimes three broods are raised in a season. The measurements of 52 eggs average 12.51 by 8.30 millimeters; the eggs showing the four extremes measure 13.72 by 8.64, 13.21 by 8.89, 11.68 by 8.13, and 12.19 by 7.87 millimeters.

Young: The period of incubation, performed by the female only, is said to be about 13 days. Mary Beal (1933) writes of the young:

At feeding-time they looked like pale yellow-brown caterpillars with widely gaping months, stretching up hungrily. Mother Hummer left the nest every fifteen minutes, and each alternate time on her return she fed the babies, thrusting her long bill down their throats until I held my breath lest she’d punch a hole through them, and every time I breathed a sigh of relief when it was safely over.

They grew amazingly fast in a week they made quite a respectable appearance, and at the end of two weeks they were beautiful, shapely birdlings, completely filling the nest. * * *

On the nineteenth day, the babies perched on the edge of the nest and tried their wings with a quick humming motion just like Mother’s, but they made no attempt to lift themselves into the air. They were still fed as regularly as clockwork, every half hour.

The day they were three weeks old, they left the nest, flying about with a smart little air of importance, giving thin squeaks of excitement.

The care and feeding of the young seem to depend entirely on the female, as well as the building of the nest. The male is seldom seen even in the vicinity of the nest.

Plumages: The naked young soon begin to acquire a nestling, or juvenal, plumage and are fully fledged before they leave the nest at the age of about three weeks. The nestling has a much shorter bill than the adult; the crown is a mixture of grayish buff and dusky; the back shows a mixture of dusky and glossy green, the latter feathers tipped with buffy; the throat and abdomen are dull white; the flanks are light drab; and the remiges, except the middle pair, are tipped with dull white. This plumage, which is much like that of the adult female, is apparently worn through most of or all the summer; I have seen it in its purity as late as August 24; but I have seen young males that were beginning to acquire a few violet feathers in the gorget as early as July 20. Progress toward maturity is rather slow and is prolonged through the winter; I have seen young males with imperfect gorgets in February and as late as May 15. As the ruby-throated hummingbird is said to have a complete molt in spring, this may also be the case with the black-chinned, which is so closely related; if this is so, the fully adult plumage must be acquired at this molt. Ridgway (1911) says that the young male is “similar to the adult female, but feathers of upper parts margined terminally with pale grayish huffy, under parts more or less strongly tinged or suffused with pale huffy brownish, and throat always (?) streaked or spotted with dusky”; and that the young female is “similar to the young male, but throat usually immaculate or with the dusky spots or streaks smaller and less distinct.”

Adult females are considerably larger than adult males, the wing averaging nearly 10 percent longer. This seems to be more or less true of all the species of Archilochus and Selasphorus.

Food: The black-chinned, like other hummingbirds, feeds on insects and sweets, mostly obtained from various flowers. It does not seem to be very particular in its choice of flowers in which to forage, though I was greatly impressed in California with the popularity of the “tree tobacco” (Nicotiana glauca) as a feeding ground for this and other hummingbirds. This is a small tree or large shrub that grows from 12 to 20 feet high and bears numerous clusters of slender, yellow, tubular flowers. The hummers frequent these little trees in large numbers; Major Bendire (1895) says that R. II. Lawrence saw some 70 or 80 hummingbirds in a patch of wild tobacco in less than two hours. The same observer noted that this and Anna’s and Costa’s hummingbirds “were attracted by a bright red flower (Delphinium cardinalis) growing on a clean, slender, juicy stalk, from 2 to 6 feet high.”

In the Santa Rita Mountains, Arizona, Mrs. Bailey (1923) took one “feeding from the orange-colored tubes of honeysuckle (Anisocanthus thurberi); its throat was full of nectar; others were seen about the red terminal blossoms of ocotillo. In the Colorado Valley, Dr. Grinnell (1914) found it feeding about the flowering bushes of Lycium andersoni, about the profusely blossoming palo verdes, and about the lavender flowers of ironwoods. George Finlay Simmons (1925) says that, in Texas, it “hovers and feeds about the laterally clustered pink flowers of the Texas buckeye, the pink flowers of the Texas redbud, and the rich purple and overpoweringly-perfumed flowers of the Texas mountain laurel on slopes and flattened valleys in the hills, largely on minute insects but also on nectar, pollen, and dew.” Robert S. Woods (1927), at a time of unprecedented drought in southern Arizona, noted that “aside from a very few scattered mescals, there was an entire lack of flowers, in lieu of which the hummingbirds were systematically probing the clusters of leaves at the ends of the live oak twigs.” The black-chinned hummingbird, like its eastern relative, has been known to feed on syrup made of sugar or honey and placed in artificial containers.

This hummer also poses as a flycatcher, as noted by several observers. Milton P. Skinner writes to me: “I saw one perched on a bush, 12 feet above ground on the edge of an open space. It was watching for insects. When one came within reach the hummingbird darted after it, sometimes going as much as 40 feet. It perched quietly and was quite hump-backed, but its head turned constantly from side to side. Generally its prey was not high up, hut once the bird shot up into the air at least 50 feet. After watching it for half an hour I left it still looking for insects as at first. Later another one was seen buzzing about the bases of some willows. This one caught its insects as it came to them, but it did not perch and watch for them.”

Behavior: The flight of the black-chinned hummingbird when traveling from one place to another is swift and direct. While hovering about its feeding stations it has perfect control of its movements; it can remain stationary in the air, rise or fall at will, and even move backward with a downward thrust of its broad tail. The little wings vibrate with astonishing rapidity, as described more fully under the ruby-throated hummingbird; no ordinary camera shutter is quick enough to stop the motion. Mr. Skinner says in his notes: “Early in the morning these birds are rather quiet, but by 9 o’clock they become livelier and are really quite nervous. About 9 a. m. one was seen to fly to a small creek and have a good splatter bath in a shallow pool; then it flew up on a 12-foot willow to sun itself and preen. When they perch on willows and small limbs they alight both crosswise and lengthwise of the perch. As a rule they seem bold and unafraid of people.”

W. L. Dawson (1923) relates the following:

Once, a hummer, finding Itself entrapped in a porch by a wall of “chicken-wire’ netting with meshes only an inch and a half in diameter, first passed slowly before the face of the screen, searching whether there might be any exception in his favor. Finding none, he made up his mind and darted through. So swiftly was the passage effected that the eye could detect no change in the position of the bird’s wings. Only the ear noted an infinitesimal pause in their rhythm. Yet to accomplish this, the bird had been observed to suspend the propeller motion of its winds, to furl them, to halve their normal spread, and to resume again upon the other side of the screen.

Voice: Mr. Simmons (1925) tersely describes the vocal efforts of this bird as follows: “Song, by male, a sweet and low, though very high-pitched warble, like the sound produced as a result of whistling through the teeth; on still air, can be heard for 25 or 30 feet. Chase note, similar to song, but louder and chippering, like a light and rapid smacking of the lips together, uttered as one bird rapidly chases another hither and thither.”

Mr. Woods (1927b) describes a courtship note as “a long-drawn, pulsating, plaintive, liquid note, probably the most pleasing utterance of any four hummingbirds.”

Field marks: The male black-chinned hummingbird is easily recognized by the black chin and sides of the head and by the conspicuous white collar separating the square-cut gorget from the rather dark under parts; the violet gorget, just below the black chin, is not easily seen unless the light happens to strike it just right; there is a white spot behind the eye, which can be seen at short range. The female is not so easily recognized; it is much like the female Anna’s hummingbird and is often seen with it, but it is decidedly smaller; the female Costa’s and female black-chinned are so much alike that they can be distinguished only by a close view of the tail. In Costa’s, according to Ridgway (1911), the middle pair of rectrices are bronze-green, the next pair similar, but with terminal portion black; third pair tipped with dull white or pale brownish gray, extensively black subterminally and dull brownish gray basally, the gray and black separated (at least on outer web) by more or less of metallic bronze-green; fourth and outermost pairs with whitish tip broader, basal grayish more extended, and with little if any metallic greenish between the gray and black. In the black-chinned, the three outer rectrices on each side are broadly tipped with white, the subterminal portion extensively black, ‘the basal half (more or less) metallic bronze-green (sometimes grayish basally). Thus, the comparative amount of green on the two outer pairs of tail feathers determines the species.

DISTRIBUTION

Range: Western North America.

Breeding range: The breeding range of the black-chinned hummingbird extends north to southwestern British Colttmbia (probably Brentwood, Chilliwack, probably Vaseaux Lake, and probab]y Edgewood); and probably northwestern Montana (Columbia Falls). East to probably western Montana (Columbia Falls, Flathead Lake, Missoula, and Stevensville); south-central Idaho (Blue Lake); western Colorado (Glenwood Springs, Grand Junction, and Paradox); New Mexico (Espanola, Roswell, and Carlsbad); and western Texas (San Angelo, Kerrville, San Antonio, and Losoya Crossing). South to southern Texas (Losoya Crossing, Somerset, and Chisos Mountains); southern Chihuahua (Rio Sestin); southern Sonora (San Javier and Guaymas); northeastern Baja California (Cerro Prieto); and southern California (Palo Verde and San Diego). West to California (San Diego, Escondido, Santa Barbara, Gilroy, Marysville, and Dales); Oregon (Prospect and Eugene); Washington (Prescott and Yakima); and southwestern British Columbia (probably Brentwood).

Winter range: During the winter season this species is apparently concentrated in the region from extreme southern California (Palm Springs and San Diego); south to Guerrero (Venta de Zopilote and Chilpancingo); and the Federal District of Mexico (Mexico City).

One was seen at Marysville, Calif., on December 23, 1910, while another was noted at Fresno on January 8 and again on January 18, 1937.

Spring migration: Early dates of spring arrival are: Texas: Kerrville, March 11; San Antonio, March 27. New Mexico: Rodeo, April 9. Colorado: Ouray, May 10; Fort Lewis, May 12; Grand Junction, May 20. Montana: Columbia Falls, May 17; Cornwallis, May 29. Arizona: Phoenix, February 10; Paradise, April 1; Tombstone, April 21. California: Santa Barbara, March 27; Los Angeles, April 3. Oregon: Prospect, April 10; Corvallis, April 15; Portland, April 22. Washington: Yakima, May 13; Pullman, May 28. British Columbia: Victoria, May 4; Agassiz, May 13.

Fall migration: Very little information is available concerning the fall movement, but late dates of departure are: Washington: Yakima, September 18. Oregon: Coos Bay, August 10. California: Los Angeles, September 3. Texas: Somerset, November 4.

Casual records: A specimen was collected at Kearney, Nebr., in August 1903.

Egg dates: California: 105 records, April 3 to September 3; 53 records, May 8 to June 6, indicating the height of the season.

Texas: 20 records, April 4 to June 12; 10 records, April 12 to 21.