Illinois Nature Guide: November 2026
November is the slide into winter in Illinois — the last leaves fall, the waterfowl migration peaks on the rivers, and the prairie stands bleached and bronze. The growing season is over, the first snows dust the north, and the bare-tree structure of the woods returns for the cold months ahead.
What to look for this week
- Bald eagles concentrate at the open water below the Mississippi and Illinois river dams, fishing the churning tailwaters in the season's classic Illinois winter spectacle.
- The Quadrantid meteor shower peaks in a short, sharp burst around January 3 — watch the northeast after midnight from a dark site away from city lights.
- A planning week: order seeds early, and leave any snow banked over perennial beds as the best insulation an Illinois garden gets.
Birds This Month
November is the peak of the waterfowl migration in Illinois, and the rivers are the place to be. Huge concentrations of mallards, northern pintail, green-winged teal, gadwall, wigeon, northern shoveler, and diving ducks stage at Emiquon and the Illinois and Mississippi backwaters, joined by tens of thousands of snow, greater white-fronted, and Canada geese. Bugling lines of sandhill cranes still pour south over the eastern half of the state, and tundra swans pass through.
Late sparrows linger — white-throated, white-crowned, fox, and American tree sparrows arrive for the winter — and dark-eyed juncos return to the feeders en masse. As the rivers begin to freeze in the north, the first bald eagles gather below the dams. This is the month feeders fill again with cardinals, chickadees, nuthatches, woodpeckers, and juncos. Watch for late or lingering rarities along the Lake Michigan shore, where the open water still concentrates gulls and waterbirds.
What's Blooming
The wildflower season is over in November — the killing frosts have ended the blooms statewide. The very last witch hazel may still hold its spidery yellow flowers in the woods early in the month, the final native bloom of the year, and a stray aster or dandelion may open on a warm day, but the show is finished. What the prairie offers now is its winter architecture: the bleached, rattling seed heads of coneflower, rattlesnake master, compass plant, and blazing star standing among the bronze and copper grasses of big bluestem, Indian grass, and little bluestem. These standing stems and seeds feed goldfinches, juncos, and sparrows through the winter and shelter overwintering insects. In gardens, the last hardy mums fade and the structural seed heads left standing earn their keep as both bird food and quiet winter beauty.
Garden This Month
November is when the Illinois garden goes to bed. Finish the last fall harvest — frost-sweetened kale, collards, carrots, and Brussels sprouts can take repeated freezes — and clear out spent annual crops, composting the healthy debris. Get the last garlic and spring bulbs planted before the ground freezes hard.
This is the month to protect plants for winter: after the ground starts to freeze, mulch perennial beds, strawberries, and newly planted crowns to buffer the freeze-thaw cycles that heave and kill them, and pile shredded leaves over tender plantings. Wrap young tree trunks against winter sunscald and rabbit and rodent damage, water trees and shrubs deeply before the freeze, and drain and store hoses. Clean, sharpen, and oil tools, empty and store pots, and shut off and drain outdoor water before the hard cold sets in.
Zone 5b (Chicago metro & northern Illinois): the garden is shutting down — finish planting garlic and bulbs early, mulch perennial beds and strawberries after the ground starts to freeze, drain hoses, and wrap young tree trunks against sunscald and rodents.
Zone 6b (south-central Illinois): a little more time remains — harvest the last frost-hardy greens, get garlic and bulbs in the ground, and mulch beds before the hard freezes arrive.
What's at the Farmers Market
November markets wind down to the durable harvest as the outdoor season closes and indoor winter markets begin. The stands carry the storage crops: potatoes, onions, garlic, carrots, beets, parsnips, turnips, cabbage, winter squash, sweet potatoes, and the last pumpkins. Apples and fresh cider are still plentiful from cold storage, and frost-sweetened kale, collards, and Brussels sprouts come in from the field.
This is the heart of the holiday-cooking season, so look for sweet potatoes, winter squash, cranberries from northern bogs, and the freshly dug Collinsville-area horseradish at its pungent best. Jarred preserves, honey, and eggs round out the offerings. Choose squash and pumpkins with hard rinds and intact stems and store them cool and dry; keep roots in a cool, dark, humid spot; and store apples cold. Most outdoor markets close for the season by late month, handing off to the indoor winter markets.
Night Sky This Month
November's long, dark, cold nights bring the brilliant winter constellations back into the evening sky. The Pleiades star cluster and orange Aldebaran in Taurus climb the eastern sky after dark, with bright Capella and the rising of Orion later in the evening signaling the return of winter. The Great Square of Pegasus and Andromeda still hold the south, and the Milky Way arches overhead through Cassiopeia and Cygnus.
The Leonid meteor shower peaks in mid-November — usually a modest shower of a dozen or so fast meteors an hour, though it has produced rare spectacular storms in the past — best after midnight from a dark site. The clear, dry autumn air and the dark skies of the Shawnee National Forest in far southern Illinois make for excellent viewing far from the Chicago glow.
The printable Illinois night-sky guide lists this year's exact Leonid peak date, moon phase, and planet positions for your location.
Butterflies & Pollinators
The active butterfly season has ended across Illinois by November, closed out by the killing frosts. The state's monarchs are far to the south now, the last of them reaching their wintering grounds in the oyamel fir forests of central Mexico. The species that overwinter here have all gone into hiding for the cold months: mourning cloaks, eastern commas, and question marks wait out the winter as adults wedged behind loose bark and in woodpiles and outbuildings, protected by the natural antifreeze in their bodies. Other species overwinter as eggs, chrysalises, or dormant caterpillars tucked in leaf litter and grass thatch — including the prairie specialists like the regal fritillary, whose tiny first-stage caterpillars hide in the prairie duff at Nachusa and Midewin. Leaving leaves, stems, and brush undisturbed over winter is the single best way to shelter the butterflies that will reappear next spring.
Trees This Month
November is leaf-fall in Illinois — the last of the autumn color drops and the woods return to their bare winter structure. The early-turning trees are long bare, and through the month the oaks, which color and drop last, finally let go, though many young white and red oaks and the ironwood hold their tan, papery leaves through winter in the trait called marcescence. The bald cypress in the southern swamps finish dropping their rusty needles into the Cache River, going fully bare and gray.
With the leaves down, the bare architecture of the trees stands revealed: the mottled white trunks of the sycamores along the rivers, the shaggy plates of shagbark hickory, and the broad, spreading crowns of the open-grown savanna bur oaks. Where they were planted, the eastern white pines and native eastern redcedars now hold the only green as the deciduous forest settles into dormancy for the winter.
Go deeper with the Illinois guides
The complete Illinois birding, native-plant, wildflower, and night-sky guides — or the whole year in one bundle.
Same month elsewhere: November in Indiana · November in Iowa · November in Kansas