Louisiana Nature Guide: February 2026
February is the turn of the year in Louisiana — the wintering geese and ducks still throng the marshes while red maples flame over the swamps and the first crawfish of the season hit the boil. It is a month of late winter birding, early bloom, and the busiest planting window in the Southern garden.
What to look for this week
- Wintering Snow and White-fronted Geese throng Cameron Prairie and Sabine NWRs at their peak, rising in roaring clouds as the year's last Christmas Bird Counts wrap up across Louisiana.
- The Quadrantid meteor shower peaks in a short, sharp burst around January 3, best after midnight from the dark, open marshes of the Cameron coast.
- Gulf oysters from the brackish coastal reefs are at their cool-season prime, alongside the last Plaquemines satsumas and frost-sweetened greens.
- Cold frames and the mild lower delta keep collards, mustard, and spinach growing; protect young satsuma and citrus from any hard freeze.
Birds This Month
February holds the last of Louisiana's wintering waterfowl in great numbers across the coastal marshes and Acadiana ricelands. Snow Geese, Greater White-fronted Geese, and Ross's Geese still rise in clouds at Cameron Prairie and Sabine NWRs, and the impoundments hold Northern Pintail, Gadwall, American Wigeon, Green-winged Teal, and Mottled Duck. The Brown Pelican, the state bird, lines the coastal jetties, while Roseate Spoonbills, White Ibis, and wintering shorebirds work the mudflats.
Late in the month the first stirrings of spring appear. Purple Martins — the earliest scouts — arrive over south Louisiana, and resident birds begin to sing: Northern Cardinals, Carolina Wrens, Carolina Chickadees, and the Northern Mockingbird tune up at dawn. Wintering sparrows still pack the brushy edges, and in the Kisatchie pinelands the Red-cockaded Woodpecker, Brown-headed Nuthatch, and Bachman's Sparrow hold their longleaf territories. Watch the cypress swamps and lakes for lingering Bald Eagles already on nests and the first returning Ospreys.
What's Blooming
February breaks Louisiana's winter with the first real flowers. In the bottomland woods, spring beauty, henbit, and the nodding trout lily open in the leaf litter, while red maple sets the swamp edges aglow with its red flowers and the earliest elm blooms. Along roadsides and old fields, the first buttercups (Ranunculus) and the introduced crimson clover begin to color the south.
In gardens, the show is on. Camellias blaze in every old yard, joined by Japanese magnolia (saucer magnolia), Taiwan flowering cherry, spirea, and a wave of bulbs — daffodils, narcissus, paperwhites, and the heirloom snowflakes (Leucojum). The native red buckeye begins to push its scarlet flower spikes in the woods of the southern parishes by month's end, timed to the first Ruby-throated Hummingbirds. Down in the cypress swamps and along the bayous, the earliest Louisiana iris foliage stands tall, the famous native irises just weeks from their show.
Garden This Month
February is the busiest late-winter month in the Louisiana garden, a true planting window while the North still waits. This is prime time to plant Irish potatoes, English peas, snap peas, onion sets, leeks, carrots, beets, turnips, lettuce, spinach, and radishes directly in the ground across the southern half of the state. Set out transplants of broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, and collards for a spring harvest before the heat.
Indoors under lights, start the warm-season crops — tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, and basil — to be ready for setting out after the last frost, which comes in March across most of the state. Finish all dormant pruning of peach, plum, fig, and muscadine, prune roses for the famous Louisiana spring flush, and apply dormant oil to fruit trees. Plant bare-root blueberries, blackberries, and fruit trees, and divide and replant Louisiana irises in the wet beds. Top-dress beds with compost and prepare ground for the long warm season ahead.
Zone 8a (north Louisiana): still freeze-prone. Continue pruning fruit, muscadines, and roses, plant Irish potatoes and onion sets late in the month, and start tomato, pepper, and eggplant seed indoors under lights to set out after the last frost in mid-to-late March.
Zone 9a (Acadiana & central prairie): the prime late-winter planting window. Plant Irish potatoes, English peas, carrots, beets, lettuce, and onion sets now, and start warm-season seedlings indoors. Sweet corn and snap beans can go in at month's end in a warm year.
Zone 9b (lower delta & New Orleans): spring is essentially here. Direct-sow beans, sweet corn, squash, and cucumbers late in the month in a warm spell, set out the earliest tomato transplants under protection, and keep harvesting the overwintered greens.
What's at the Farmers Market
February brings Louisiana's most anticipated arrival: the first crawfish of the season begin to move, sold live by the sack as the Atchafalaya and the Acadiana pond ponds warm — the state's cultural icon, building toward its spring peak. The Crescent City, Red Stick, and Lafayette markets keep up the winter rhythm, and the last satsumas, navel oranges, Meyer lemons, and kumquats of the citrus season fill the tables alongside Gulf oysters still at their cool-season prime.
The frost-sweetened winter greens hold strong — collards, mustard greens, turnip greens, kale, and cabbage — with carrots, beets, turnips, leeks, and stored sweet potatoes. Value-added staples round out the stalls: local cane syrup, honey, stone-ground grits, cornmeal, Louisiana rice, and fall pecans. When buying crawfish, choose lively, heavy, sweet-smelling ones with no strong odor, keep them cool and damp but never sealed airtight, and cook them the same day. Pick greens with crisp, unwilted leaves and refrigerate; choose oysters with tightly closed, heavy shells and keep them cold under a damp cloth.
Night Sky This Month
February still offers Louisiana long, dark nights and the last of the crisp winter sky before the humid haze of spring returns. The unlit marsh horizons of Cameron Prairie and Sabine NWRs, the open Acadiana ricelands, the pine backcountry of Kisatchie National Forest, and the dark Atchafalaya all hold their darkness, and the Baton Rouge Astronomical Society and Pontchartrain Astronomy Society run member viewing nights when skies are clear. The LIGO Science Education Center near Livingston offers public astronomy programs.
The winter showpieces still command the evening: Orion stands high in the south with the Orion Nebula glowing in his sword, Sirius blazing below in the Winter Hexagon, and the Pleiades riding overhead. As the evening deepens, Leo the lion climbs in the east, the first herald of spring stars, and the Beehive Cluster in Cancer shows in binoculars between Leo and Gemini. No major meteor shower marks February, making it a fine month for tracing constellations and lunar craters. The printable Louisiana night-sky guide gives this year's planet positions and the best dark-sky sites near you.
Butterflies & Pollinators
February stirs the first butterflies of the Louisiana year as warm spells push above seventy degrees. Along the coast and across the southern parishes, the overwintering gulf fritillary, cloudless sulphur, and question mark take wing on sunny afternoons, and the small orange sulphur and sleepy orange appear over clover and senna. The hibernating mourning cloak and eastern comma may flush from bottomland woods in the warmer days.
Late in the month the first fresh broods emerge. Eastern tiger swallowtails begin to break from their overwintering chrysalises in the southern parishes, and the tiny spring azure appears in the woods. The first northbound monarchs that crossed the Gulf can reach the Louisiana coast by late February in an early spring, laying eggs on emerging milkweed and beginning the generational relay north. Now is the time to plant native milkweed, passionflower, and nectar plants so they are established before the spring surge of butterflies arrives in March.
Trees This Month
February brings the first flush of tree color to Louisiana, weeks ahead of the North. Red maple leads, its red flowers and winged samaras reddening the swamp edges and bottomlands statewide, soon joined by the tiny flowers of American and winged elm and the catkins of black willow along the bayous. The native red buckeye pushes its scarlet flower spikes in the southern woods, and eastern redbud begins to bud toward its purple-pink show.
The evergreens still anchor the landscape — the glossy Southern magnolia, the loblolly and longleaf pines of the north, and the moss-draped coastal live oaks. In the swamps, the bare gray bald cypress, the state tree, and water tupelo still stand dormant over the dark water, their buds not yet broken. Watch for the first hint of green on willow and the swelling buds on swamp red maple and boxelder, and along old home sites the heirloom Japanese magnolia and flowering pear open their early blossoms before the native canopy leafs out.
Go deeper with the Louisiana guides
The complete Louisiana birding, native-plant, wildflower, and night-sky guides — or the whole year in one bundle.
Same month elsewhere: February in Maine · February in Maryland · February in Massachusetts