Alabama Nature Guide: September 2026
September is the great turning of the Alabama year — the heat finally breaks, the fall warbler migration streams down to Dauphin Island, and the monarchs begin their southbound funnel toward the Gulf. Goldenrod and asters gild the prairies, muscadines and the first pecans come in, and the fall garden flourishes in the cooling air.
What to look for this week
- Sandhill Cranes crowd the fields at Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge at their winter peak, bugling over the Tennessee River, while Christmas Bird Counts wrap up across the state.
- The Quadrantid meteor shower peaks in a short, sharp burst around January 3 — best after midnight from a dark Cumberland Plateau ridge or the unlit west end of Dauphin Island.
- Camellias, the state flower, open red, pink, and white against the cold in gardens across central and south Alabama and at Bellingrath Gardens near Mobile.
Birds This Month
September is one of Alabama's great migration months, the fall counterpart to spring's coastal drama. Dauphin Island and Fort Morgan again become migrant magnets as southbound songbirds stage before the Gulf crossing — the woods fill with warblers (American Redstart, Northern Parula, Black-and-white, Magnolia, Bay-breasted, Tennessee, Black-throated Green, and many more), vireos, tanagers, thrushes, Rose-breasted Grosbeaks, and orioles. The Fort Morgan area hosts hawk and songbird banding and a famous concentration of migrants.
The raptor migration builds — streams of Broad-winged Hawks kettle and pour south, joined by Mississippi Kites, American Kestrels, Ospreys, and harriers, and the last Swallow-tailed Kites depart. Ruby-throated Hummingbirds peak at feeders and begin streaming toward the Gulf, and Common Nighthawks stream south in loose flocks at dusk. Shorebirds continue at Wheeler NWR and the coast, and the first wintering ducks, sparrows, and kinglets begin to arrive late in the month. The fall hummingbird and warbler watching is at its very best.
What's Blooming
September is the height of Alabama's fall wildflower season, the prairies and roadsides gold and purple. The goldenrods (many species) blaze across the Black Belt prairies, old fields, and longleaf savannas, joined by the great show of asters — New England, aromatic, calico, and many more — in white, blue, and purple. The native swamp sunflower, narrowleaf sunflower, ironweed, Joe-Pye weed, blazing star, false foxglove, and partridge pea light the open country, a critical nectar source for the southbound monarchs.
The Black Belt prairie remnants are at their glorious best now, among the rarest and most flower-rich habitats in the state. In the wet places and the Mobile-Tensaw Delta, cardinal flower, swamp sunflower, climbing aster, and the spectacular red spider lilies (hurricane lilies) bloom after the rains, and seashore mallow flowers in the coastal marsh. In gardens, the fall-blooming sasanqua camellias begin, the salvias, lantana, zinnias, and mums color up, and the passionflower sets its ripening maypop fruits.
Garden This Month
September is one of the most rewarding months in the Alabama garden, as the brutal heat finally breaks and the fall garden flourishes. The cool-season crops planted in August surge in the milder air — harvest collards, kale, turnips, mustard, lettuce, spinach, broccoli, cabbage, and fall beans, and keep sowing quick crops like lettuce, spinach, radishes, arugula, and turnips for a steady autumn supply. The fall tomatoes set and ripen fruit in the gentler weather, and the heat-lovers — okra, southern peas, and peppers — give their last strong harvest.
This is the month to plant garlic and onion sets for next year, and to set out strawberry plants and divide and plant perennials in the cooling soil. Sow cover crops like crimson clover and cereal rye in beds you're resting to build the soil over winter. Keep watering the fall plantings until the rains return, and stay alert for a last flush of caterpillars on the brassicas. Clean up spent summer plants and add them to the compost. The cool, comfortable days and productive beds make September a gardener's reward after the long Alabama summer.
Zone 7a (highest Cumberland Plateau & northeast Alabama): the fall garden flourishes in the cooling air, with first frost still weeks off in October. Keep harvesting fall greens, broccoli, and beans, sow a last quick round of spinach and lettuce, and plant garlic toward month's end for next summer.
Zone 7b (north Alabama & Tennessee Valley): prime fall growing. Harvest the fall greens, brassicas, and root crops, sow more lettuce, spinach, and radishes, plant garlic and onion sets, and enjoy the relief of the cooling weather on the garden.
Zone 8a (central Alabama): the fall garden takes off in the milder air. Set out more cool-season transplants, sow greens and roots, plant garlic, and watch the fall tomatoes set fruit for a second harvest before the late-autumn frost.
What's at the Farmers Market
September markets in Alabama bridge summer and fall. The last of the warm-season crops linger — tomatoes, okra, field peas, peppers, eggplant, squash, and the final watermelons and cantaloupes — while the fall crops begin: the first greens, lettuce, broccoli, and tender turnips. The signature fruit now is the muscadine and scuppernong, the thick-skinned native Southern grapes, at their fragrant peak, and the first new-crop pecans appear late in the month.
Fresh Gulf shrimp from Bayou La Batre remain at the markets, and the first hard-shell winter squash and pumpkins arrive, along with sweet potatoes coming in from the field. Choose muscadines and scuppernongs plump, dry, and unbruised, and refrigerate, eating within several days; pick the first pecans heavy and unblemished and store shelled nuts in the freezer; choose winter squash with hard, dull rinds and intact stems for long keeping; and keep tomatoes at room temperature. The markets carry the comfortable, generous overlap of the two best seasons of the Alabama year.
Night Sky This Month
September's cooler, drier, clearer nights — and the relief from summer's humid haze — make it one of the finest stargazing months in Alabama. The autumn equinox around September 22 balances day and night as the season turns, and the comfortable evenings draw observers to the state's dark-sky havens: the Von Braun Astronomical Society observatory at Monte Sano State Park near Huntsville, the Cumberland Plateau and Bankhead National Forest, and the unlit Gulf beaches of west Dauphin Island.
The summer Milky Way still arches overhead through the Summer Triangle early in the night, while the autumn sky climbs in the east — the Great Square of Pegasus rises with the chained princess Andromeda, home to the Andromeda Galaxy (M31), the most distant object visible to the naked eye, a faint smudge from a dark Alabama site. The W-shaped Cassiopeia and the Double Cluster in Perseus glow in the northeast. There is no major meteor shower this month — a fine time instead for galaxies and clusters. The printable Alabama night-sky guide lists this year's exact planet positions and the best dark-sky sites for your region.
Butterflies & Pollinators
September is the month of the great monarch migration through Alabama. The southbound generation streams down the state toward the Gulf, nectaring heavily on goldenrod, asters, and other fall flowers to fuel the journey, and the numbers build through the month, staging in waves on the coast at Dauphin Island and Fort Morgan before the long Gulf crossing to Mexico — one of the most stirring wildlife spectacles of the Alabama fall. Plant and protect goldenrod and native asters to feed them.
The cloudless sulphurs also stream strongly southward now, drifting in loose, steady flights, and gulf fritillaries remain abundant on the passionflower. The fall broods keep the gardens busy — common buckeyes, painted and American ladies, question marks, fiery and sachem skippers, variegated fritillaries, little yellows, sleepy oranges, and the late swallowtails. The goldenrod, asters, ironweed, and salvias are alive with nectaring butterflies on warm afternoons. This is one of the best butterfly-watching months of the year in Alabama — and the single most important time to have fall nectar flowers blooming for the migrants passing through.
Trees This Month
September brings the first true signs of fall color to Alabama's trees, beginning the long autumn show that runs into November. The earliest turners lead — blackgum (tupelo) blazes scarlet and burgundy, often the first tree to color, sumac reddens along the roadsides, dogwood deepens to maroon (its red berries ripe for the birds), and the sassafras turns gold and orange in the old fields. The sweetgum begins to show its early reds and purples.
The fruiting and seed-fall accelerate as the woods prepare for winter — the acorns drop in earnest from the oaks (a feast for deer, turkeys, and squirrels), the hickory nuts and pecans ripen and fall, the persimmons sweeten on the bare branches after the first cool nights, and the pine cones open and release their seeds. The muscadine vines hang heavy with ripe fruit in the woods. On the Cumberland Plateau and in the Bankhead coves, the first sugar maples, hickories, and tulip trees begin to yellow at the higher, cooler elevations, the leading edge of the color that will sweep down the state in October.
Go deeper with the Alabama guides
The complete Alabama birding, native-plant, wildflower, and night-sky guides — or the whole year in one bundle.
Same month elsewhere: September in Arizona · September in Arkansas · September in California