Georgia Nature Guide: August 2026
August is late, sultry summer in Georgia — fall shorebird migration peaks on the coast, hummingbirds swarm the gardens, and goldenrod and ironweed begin the late-season bloom. The Perseid meteors and the rich Milky Way crown the warm dark nights.
What to look for this week
- Christmas Bird Counts wrap up across Georgia as wintering waterfowl crowd the coastal impoundments at Harris Neck and the Altamaha, and rafts of ducks fill the Piedmont reservoirs.
- The Quadrantid meteor shower peaks in a short, sharp burst around January 3 — best after midnight from a dark north Georgia mountain ridge or the unlit Okefenokee.
- Cold frames and row covers keep collards and kale growing on the Coastal Plain, while mountain gardeners order short-season seed before favorites sell out.
Birds This Month
August opens Georgia's fall migration in earnest, even in the lingering heat. The coast is the highlight: fall shorebird migration peaks on the mudflats and beaches of Tybee, Jekyll, Little St. Simons, and Cumberland, where Semipalmated, Western, and Least Sandpipers, Short-billed Dowitchers, yellowlegs, Whimbrel, Marbled Godwits, and Wilson's and Semipalmated Plovers stage by the thousands, and Wood Storks and herons crowd the drying pools. Painted Buntings begin to quiet and molt before departure.
Inland, the first southbound songbirds appear — early warblers (American Redstart, Northern Waterthrush, Yellow), Eastern Wood-Pewees, and flycatchers slip through the woods. Ruby-throated Hummingbirds reach their peak as migrants pour in from the north and swarm the feeders and jewelweed — the great hummingbird month in Georgia gardens. Common Nighthawks form loose migrating flocks at dusk over the towns, and Chimney Swifts begin gathering. The Swallow-tailed Kites have largely departed the southern swamps for South America, and over the savanna the Red-cockaded Woodpeckers and Brown Thrashers (the state bird) settle into the late-summer quiet.
What's Blooming
August begins Georgia's great late-summer-into-fall wildflower show, as the composites take over the fields and roadsides. The first goldenrods open their golden plumes, joined by the tall purple ironweed, dusty-rose joe-pye weed, white boneset and snakeroot, and the first asters, while the meadows blaze with tall sunflowers, partridge pea, black-eyed Susan, and coreopsis. Along streams and wet ditches the scarlet cardinal flower peaks, with blue lobelia, swamp sunflower, and turtlehead nearby.
In the Coastal Plain longleaf flatwoods the late-summer savanna flowers bloom — blazing star (liatris), meadow beauty, yellow-eyed grass, the bog orchids, and the carnivorous pitcher plants and sundews. The native passionflower (maypop) sets its egg-shaped fruit, and the late Turk's-cap lily nods along mountain streams. Gardens stay rich through the heat — crape myrtle, lantana, zinnias, salvias, black-eyed Susans, coneflowers, garden phlox, and the first spider lilies (red surprise lilies) bursting from bare ground after summer rain, a classic Southern August surprise.
Garden This Month
August is the pivot to the fall garden in Georgia, even as the summer crops finish in the heat. This is the prime planting window in the Piedmont and a starting window on the coast: set out transplants of broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, collards, and Brussels sprouts, and direct-sow carrots, beets, turnips, rutabagas, and a second crop of bush beans, squash, cucumbers, and southern peas for a fall harvest before frost. Start lettuce and other greens in the shade where the heat is fierce.
Keep picking the last summer crops — okra, southern peas, peppers, eggplant, tomatoes, and melons — and pull and compost spent, pest-ridden plants. Water deeply and mulch heavily, as August is hot and often dry, and stay ahead of the late-summer surge of stink bugs, hornworms, and fungal disease. Set out a fresh round of tomatoes for a fall harvest in the warmer regions. In the north Georgia mountains, begin the fall greens and roots and enjoy the cooling nights. The second great planting season of the Georgia year is underway.
Zone 7b (Piedmont & metro Atlanta): the fall garden goes in. Set out broccoli, cabbage, and collard transplants, direct-sow carrots, beets, turnips, and a fall crop of squash and beans, and keep the summer harvest picked as it winds down.
Zone 8b (Coastal Plain & coast): still brutally hot. Start fall transplants in shade, sow heat-tolerant greens and a final round of southern peas and squash, and water deeply — the main fall planting window opens in September here.
What's at the Farmers Market
August keeps Georgia markets full with late-summer abundance even as the season turns. Watermelon and cantaloupe are still juicy and plentiful, the first muscadine and scuppernong grapes arrive, figs are at their peak, and the last Georgia peaches finish the famous run. The summer vegetables remain heavy on the tables — vine-ripe tomatoes, okra, southern peas, butterbeans, sweet corn, peppers, eggplant, cucumbers, squash, and green beans — with the first winter squash, sweet potatoes, and pumpkins by month's end.
Choose muscadines and scuppernongs plump, dry, and unbruised, and refrigerate them to eat within several days, since their thick skins keep less long than thin-skinned grapes; pick figs just-soft and use them within a day or two as they spoil fast; and thump watermelons for a hollow sound and a creamy ground spot. Keep tomatoes at room temperature for full flavor, store okra dry and use it quickly before it toughens, and shell field peas and butterbeans soon after buying. Bunched herbs and cut flowers round out the late-summer market.
Night Sky This Month
August's warm nights and the famous Perseid meteor shower make it one of the best stargazing months of the Georgia year. The Perseids peak around August 12, throwing dozens of bright, swift meteors an hour from a dark site — best after midnight from the north Georgia mountains around Brasstown Bald and Black Rock Mountain State Park, the deep Okefenokee at Stephen C. Foster State Park, or the unlit beaches of Cumberland and Jekyll Islands. Summer haze can soften the view, so the higher, drier mountain ridgelines often give the clearest skies.
The Milky Way is at its glorious best this month: the Summer Triangle rides high overhead, and the galaxy arches from Cygnus down through the rich star clouds of Sagittarius and Scorpius low in the south — the direction of the galactic center, packed with nebulae and clusters for binoculars. As the night deepens, the great square of Pegasus and the autumn constellations begin to climb the eastern sky. The printable Georgia night-sky guide lists this year's exact Perseid peak, planet positions, and the best regional dark-sky sites.
Butterflies & Pollinators
August holds Georgia's butterfly numbers high and brings the first stirrings of fall migration. The swallowtails fly on — eastern tiger (the state butterfly), spicebush, black, pipevine, and the coastal palamedes — and the gulf fritillary reaches huge numbers on the passionflower vines across the Piedmont and Coastal Plain. Cloudless sulphurs surge and begin their directional flights, and the meadows fill with common buckeyes, pearl crescents, red-spotted purples, hackberry and tawny emperors, viceroys, and American and painted ladies.
The monarch produces the late-summer broods that will become the southbound migratory generation, so caterpillars are abundant on milkweed now. The skipper diversity is at its yearly peak — silver-spotted, fiery, sachem, clouded, ocola, long-tailed, and the southern grass skippers crowd the flowers — and the southern strays like the little metalmark and gulf fritillary push numbers in the Coastal Plain. Watch the goldenrod, ironweed, joe-pye, mistflower, lantana, and zinnias for nectaring butterflies, and check passionflower, milkweed, and pawpaw for the late-season caterpillars. The garden is alive into the warm dusk.
Trees This Month
August holds Georgia's forests in tired, dark late-summer green, the leaves often dusty and drought-stressed by month's end, and the fruit and nut crop ripening toward fall. The summer-flowering crape myrtle still blazes across the towns and roadsides, the last of the great Southern summer bloom, and the chaste tree (vitex) and tea olive add their flowers and fragrance to old gardens. The devil's walking stick (aralia) lifts its big creamy flower clusters at the woods' edge.
The crop of the year is filling out: acorns swell and the first begin to drop, the pecans of the southwest groves fatten in the shuck, the wild persimmons and pawpaws ripen, the black gum turns its first scarlet leaves — often the very first fall color in Georgia — and the sumac and Virginia creeper begin to redden at the field edges. Along the coast the evergreen live oak (the state tree), cabbage palmetto, and wax myrtle hold the maritime forest green, and the bald cypress stands dark over the Okefenokee. In the north Georgia mountains the cove hardwoods carry the heat, the green just beginning to tire on the highest slopes.
Go deeper with the Georgia guides
The complete Georgia birding, native-plant, wildflower, and night-sky guides — or the whole year in one bundle.
Same month elsewhere: August in Idaho · August in Illinois · August in Indiana