Maryland Nature Guide: May 2026
May is the peak of the Maryland year for birders — the warbler wave crests and the Baltimore Oriole sings in the canopy, the woods finish leafing out, the last frost passes and the warm-season garden goes in, and the first strawberries reach the markets.
What to look for this week
- The Chesapeake waterfowl winter peaks — Tundra Swans, geese, and rafts of canvasback and redhead crowd Blackwater NWR as the Christmas Bird Counts wrap up across Maryland.
- The Quadrantid meteor shower peaks in a short, sharp burst around January 3 — watch after midnight from a dark site like Assateague Island or the Garrett County highlands.
- A planning week for Maryland gardeners — review last season and order seeds early before the popular varieties sell out, while the ground sits frozen.
Birds This Month
May is the climax of spring migration and the single best birding month in Maryland. The warbler wave crests in the first two weeks — blackpoll, magnolia, Cape May, chestnut-sided, black-throated blue and green, Blackburnian, prairie, and a dozen more pour through the C&O Canal, Rock Creek Park, the Patuxent woods, and the Eastern Shore. The state bird, the Baltimore Oriole, sings its rich whistle from the treetops, and scarlet tanagers, rose-breasted grosbeaks, indigo buntings, and great crested flycatchers arrive on territory.
This is also the month of the red knot and the horseshoe-crab spectacle along Delaware Bay just over the line, with shorebirds — dunlin, semipalmated and least sandpipers, ruddy turnstones, dowitchers — staging on the Eastern Shore flats and impoundments. Marshes ring with marsh wrens, least bitterns, clapper rails, and seaside and saltmarsh sparrows, and the Bay's Ospreys are feeding hatchlings. The dawn chorus is at its fullest and richest of the entire year.
What's Blooming
May moves Maryland's wildflowers out of the fading woods and into the open. The last woodland species peak — wild geranium, mayapple, jack-in-the-pulpit, false Solomon's seal, golden ragwort, and the lingering columbine on the ledges — while the meadows, roadsides, and old fields fill with fleabane, ox-eye daisy, golden Alexanders, blue-eyed grass, and the first fire pink and blackberry bloom. The serpentine barrens at Soldiers Delight show their specialty flowers.
In the wetlands, blue flag iris and swamp buttercup open, and the floodplains green over the spent bluebells. The native azaleas — pinxter flower — perfume the woods with pink. In gardens, this is a peak ornamental month: peonies, irises, columbine, dianthus, alliums, clematis, and the first roses and spiderwort bloom, and the mountain laurel begins on the acidic ridges of the Piedmont and the western mountains. The pollinator season is now running at full warmth and length.
Garden This Month
May is the great planting month in the Maryland garden, when the warm-season crops finally go in. Once the danger of frost passes — mid-May across most of the state, later in the western mountains — set out transplants of tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, squash, cucumbers, and basil, and direct-sow beans, corn, cucumbers, melons, okra, and winter squash into warm soil. Keep harvesting and succession-sowing the cool-season crops — lettuce, spinach, radishes, and peas — before the heat ends them.
The garden now grows fast and needs tending. Stake and cage tomatoes as you plant them, trellis cucumbers and pole beans, and mulch everything deeply to hold moisture and suppress weeds. Pinch and feed the warm-season crops, harden off and plant out warm-season annuals, and start watching for the first pests — flea beetles, cucumber beetles, and slugs. Keep the beds weeded and watered an inch a week, deadhead the spring bulbs, and plant out dahlias and sweet potato slips at month's end as the soil fully warms.
Zone 6b (western Maryland & the Frederick uplands): wait out the late mountain frosts. Set out tomatoes, peppers, and tender crops only after mid-to-late May once nights stay reliably above the 40s, and keep row cover handy for surprise cold snaps.
Zone 7a (central Piedmont & the Baltimore–Washington corridor): the main planting month. After the mid-May frost date, set out tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, and squash, and direct-sow beans, corn, cucumbers, and melons into warm soil.
Zone 7b (lower Eastern Shore & the Bay's warming edge): warm-season planting is in full stride. Set out all the tender transplants early in the month, succession-sow beans and corn, and begin a steady watering and mulching routine as the heat builds.
What's at the Farmers Market
May is when Maryland markets fill with spring abundance. Strawberries are the headline — local, fully ripe, and fleeting — arriving from the Eastern Shore and southern Maryland farms by mid-month. The vegetable tables overflow with asparagus (peaking), lettuce, spinach, arugula, peas, spring onions, green garlic, radishes, and the first summer squash, kale, and bunches of fresh herbs. Rhubarb is in good supply.
Pots of vegetable and flower seedlings, bedding plants, and cut peonies and tulips brighten the stands, alongside local eggs, honey, cheeses, and pasture meats. Choose strawberries that are fully red and fragrant — they won't sweeten after picking — and refrigerate them dry and unwashed, using within a couple of days. Pick asparagus with tight tips, peas that are plump but tender, and squash small. Keep tender greens cool and crisp in the crisper, and use the soft spring fruit quickly.
Night Sky This Month
May's nights are mild and the spring sky stands fully risen. Orange Arcturus in Boötes blazes high overhead, blue-white Spica shines in Virgo to its south, and the semicircle of Corona Borealis and the keystone of Hercules climb the eastern sky, the latter home to the magnificent M13 globular cluster in a telescope. The galaxy fields of Virgo and Coma Berenices ride highest now, a deep-sky treasure under a dark Maryland sky.
The Eta Aquariid meteor shower, debris from Halley's Comet, peaks in early May; from Maryland's mid-latitude it favors the pre-dawn hours and a low southeastern horizon, best from the open Eastern Shore or an Assateague beach. Late in the evening the Summer Triangle of Vega, Deneb, and Altair begins to rise in the east, hinting at the summer Milky Way to come. The printable Maryland night-sky guide lists this year's exact meteor-peak dates, planet positions, and the dark-sky sites near you.
Butterflies & Pollinators
May is a rich and rising month for Maryland butterflies. The swallowtails are out in force — eastern tiger, black, spicebush, and zebra swallowtails (the last patrolling the pawpaw thickets) — joined across meadows and gardens by cabbage whites, clouded and orange sulphurs, pearl crescents, eastern tailed-blues, spring and summer azures, and the first silver-spotted skippers and grass skippers. Red admirals, American and painted ladies, and question marks are widespread.
The returning monarchs are now laying eggs on the emerging milkweed across the state, and the first home-grown caterpillars hatch by late month — check the undersides of common and swamp milkweed leaves for the striped larvae and pale eggs. The meadows and old fields fill with nectaring butterflies on the blooming fleabane, daisy, blackberry, and the first milkweed. In the woods, hairstreaks and the juvenal's and wild indigo duskywings fly. The pollinator garden is humming, and the season is building toward its summer peak.
Trees This Month
May completes the leaf-out and brings the late-spring tree flowers. The canopy is now full and deep green, and the late bloomers open: the tulip poplar lifts its orange-and-green tulip-shaped flowers high in the crown, the fragrant white clusters of black locust hang heavy and humming with bees, and the native fringetree drips with white. On the Coastal Plain, the lemony-white cups of sweetbay magnolia open in the moist woods and swamps.
The oaks finish flowering and set tiny acorns, the black cherry hangs its white flower racemes, and the American holly and blackgum bloom inconspicuously. The understory mountain laurel begins to flower on the acidic Piedmont and mountain slopes, and the native pinxter azalea perfumes the woods. The maples cast down their spinning samaras, the cottonwoods and willows release drifting seed-fluff along the rivers, and the new growth on the pines hardens into dark green needles. The forest has settled fully into its summer green by month's end.
Go deeper with the Maryland guides
The complete Maryland birding, native-plant, wildflower, and night-sky guides — or the whole year in one bundle.
Same month elsewhere: May in Massachusetts · May in Michigan · May in Minnesota