Minnesota Nature Guide: February 2026
February is the coldest, most relentless stretch of a Minnesota winter — but the light is visibly returning, and by month's end the first stirrings of the year begin. Great horned owls are already nesting, and the days lengthen fast even as the snow stays deep.
What to look for this week
- Feeders are at their winter peak — black-capped chickadees, nuthatches, and cardinals work the seed while irruptive redpolls may turn up in a northern-finch year.
- 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, especially the short-season varieties northern Minnesota gardens depend on, before they sell out.
Birds This Month
February brings the first audible turn toward spring even in the deep cold. On milder mornings, black-capped chickadees start whistling their two-note 'fee-bee' spring song, and northern cardinals sing from the treetops as the lengthening days trigger hormones. Feeders stay busy with chickadees, nuthatches, woodpeckers, and any lingering irruptive finches — redpolls, pine grosbeaks, and evening grosbeaks in a good northern-finch winter.
It's also owl season. Great horned owls are already nesting, the female incubating eggs through subzero nights, and you can hear pairs duetting at dusk across the metro and the countryside. In the north, the winter owl spectacle continues: great gray and northern hawk owls hunt the openings around Sax-Zim Bog, and snowy owls still patrol open country, airports, and the Duluth harbor. Late in the month, watch for the first bald eagles gathering at open water below dams on the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers, where they fish all winter.
What's Blooming
February is still locked in winter — there are no wildflowers blooming anywhere outdoors in Minnesota, and the snow remains deep statewide. The landscape's color is still its winter palette: red-osier dogwood stems, the orange-brown of bur oak leaves and prairie grasses, and the dark green of the pines. The one real sign of life is underground and indoors: gardeners are starting onions, leeks, and the slowest-growing flowers like geraniums and pansies under lights, and forced bulbs — paperwhites, amaryllis, and crocus — bring the only blooms of the month to a windowsill. Outside, the willows along streams and wetlands begin to brighten almost imperceptibly, their bark warming to yellow and red as sap pressure builds for the catkins that will swell in March.
Garden This Month
February is the month indoor seed-starting begins for the slowest crops. Onions, leeks, and celery need the longest lead time and go under grow lights now, along with slow-growing flowers like geraniums, petunias, and snapdragons. Set up your light shelf, label everything, and keep seedlings cool and bright to avoid the leggy stretch that warm, dim windowsills produce.
Outdoors, it's still a planning-and-protecting month. Finish dormant pruning of apples, pears, and oaks while the trees are fully asleep and disease pressure is low. Leave snow banked over perennial beds and the bases of shrubs as insulation, and resist the urge to uncover anything — Minnesota's worst plant-killer is the freeze-thaw whiplash of late winter, not the steady deep cold. Order any remaining seeds before the popular short-season varieties sell out.
Zone 3b (far north & Iron Range): with the shortest growing season in the state, start onions, leeks, and slow flowers under lights late this month, and keep planning. The snow is still your friend — leave it banked over perennials and bulbs until the spring thaw.
Zone 4a: begin onions, leeks, and celery under grow lights in late February for transplants you'll set out in May. It's the right window to finish dormant pruning of fruit trees on a calm, mild day.
Zone 5a (Twin Cities metro & southeast): the state's warmest zone can start onions, leeks, and early cool-season flowers indoors now. Prune apples and oaks while fully dormant, and check that mulch hasn't blown off marginal perennials.
What's at the Farmers Market
Indoor winter markets continue across the state, and the offerings are the durable storage harvest plus the first hints of the year ahead. Expect storage onions, garlic, carrots, beets, potatoes, parsnips, and winter squash, all still keeping well from the fall, alongside Minnesota apples from cold storage, honey, eggs, and cold-hardy greens from heated hoop houses. Preserved goods — jams, pickles, canned tomatoes, and last spring's maple syrup — round out the stalls.
Late February is also when the year's first truly seasonal product is on the horizon: the maple sugaring season. As days climb above freezing while nights stay cold, sap begins to run, and the first syrup of the year will reach markets in March. For now, choose firm, unblemished storage roots and squash, and keep them cool and dark at home to stretch the last of the cellar harvest.
Night Sky This Month
February nights are long, cold, and crystal-clear — among the best of the year for stargazing in Minnesota when the air is dry and still. The great winter constellations ride high in the early evening: Orion due south with the brilliant Orion Nebula visible in his sword, brightest-of-all Sirius blazing in the southeast, and the Winter Hexagon of bright stars — Sirius, Procyon, Pollux, Capella, Aldebaran, and Rigel — sprawling across the sky. The faint, hazy patch of the Beehive Cluster in Cancer rises in the east later in the evening.
Minnesota's high latitude makes February a good month for the northern lights; on active nights, the far north and the Boundary Waters offer the darkest skies, but displays sometimes reach the Twin Cities and beyond. Bundle up, give your eyes twenty minutes to adapt, and the cold-air clarity rewards the effort. The printable Minnesota night-sky guide lists this year's planet positions and aurora-watching tips for your latitude.
Butterflies & Pollinators
February is still far too cold for any butterfly to fly in Minnesota, with deep snow statewide and subzero nights the rule. The season's butterflies remain dormant in the forms that carry them through winter — monarchs clustered in the Mexican mountains, and the resident species frozen in place as eggs, caterpillars, chrysalises, or sheltering adults. The hardy mourning cloak, eastern comma, and question mark overwinter as adults tucked into bark crevices, hollow logs, and woodpiles, biologically antifreeze-protected and ready to emerge on the first warm spell. Those first flights are still weeks away — usually not until late March or April, when a thaw and a sunny day coax a mourning cloak out over the lingering snow. For now, this is a month to order milkweed and prairie nectar seeds and plan the garden that will feed the summer's broods.
Trees This Month
The trees are still deep in dormancy, but February ends with the year's first true tree event in the making. As the sun climbs higher and daytime temperatures begin to nudge above freezing while nights stay cold, sap pressure builds in the sugar maples — the freeze-thaw cycle that drives the rising sap and, soon, the maple-syrup season. Most producers tap in late February or March when the run begins in earnest.
The conifers — red pine, white pine, spruce, and balsam fir — remain the green backbone of the winter woods. On the willows and quaking aspen, look closely at the twig tips: the buds are swelling almost imperceptibly, and the bark of red-osier dogwood and willow brightens as the trees prepare for the explosive leaf-out still two months away. Marcescent oak and ironwood leaves still rattle in the wind.
Go deeper with the Minnesota guides
The complete Minnesota birding, native-plant, wildflower, and night-sky guides — or the whole year in one bundle.
Same month elsewhere: February in Mississippi · February in Missouri · February in Montana