Oklahoma Nature Guide: December 2026
December settles Oklahoma into winter — wintering geese, cranes, and bald eagles at their peak, the Cross Timbers and prairies bare and bronze, and long, dark nights under the brilliant winter stars. Christmas Bird Counts fill the calendar.
What to look for this week
- Bald eagles gather below the dams at Lake Texoma and Sequoyah NWR and on the open big lakes, perched in the bare cottonwoods.
- The Quadrantid meteor shower peaks around January 3 in a short, sharp burst; look northeast after midnight from a dark western-Oklahoma sky.
- The Cross Timbers post oaks and blackjack oaks hang onto their leathery brown leaves, giving the winter timber its shaggy look.
- A planning and pruning month; order seed early and prune dormant fruit trees and grapes on the rare calm, mild day.
Birds This Month
December is peak winter birding in Oklahoma, the season of the Christmas Bird Counts that fill the month across the state. The waterfowl spectacle is at its height: huge concentrations of mallards, gadwall, pintail, wigeon, and diving ducks pack the reservoirs, and great swirling flocks of snow, Ross's, and greater white-fronted geese blanket the fields and refuges at Salt Plains, Hackberry Flat, and Sequoyah. Sandhill cranes winter on the central and western plains, bugling in long lines.
Bald eagles are at their winter peak, gathered below the dams and along the big lakes — Sequoyah, Texoma, Keystone, and Kaw all reliably hold them in the bare cottonwoods. The open country teems with wintering raptors: red-tailed and Northern harrier on every drive, rough-legged hawks, prairie falcons, and the chance of a golden eagle on the western plains and at the Wichita Mountains.
Feeders are busy across the state with Harris's, white-crowned, and white-throated sparrows, dark-eyed juncos, Northern cardinals, and cedar waxwings, and the stubble holds Lapland longspurs and horned larks.
This month's tip: join a local Christmas Bird Count or run a refuge auto route at dawn for the full winter sweep — geese, cranes, eagles, and raptors. Bundle against the biting prairie wind, which makes a December morning feel far colder than the air temperature.
What's Blooming
December is the dormant heart of winter for Oklahoma wildflowers, with the prairies brown and the woodland floor under leaf litter. True blooms are essentially absent statewide, though a freakishly warm spell in the south might briefly open a henbit or a dandelion. The basal rosettes of next year's prairie plants wait green and flat in the sod, biding their time beneath the frost.
The reward now is in form and seed. The tallgrass prairie holds its winter beauty — the bleached and copper-toned big bluestem, little bluestem, and Indian grass rippling in the wind under low, hard light — and the blackened seed heads of coneflower, Maximilian sunflower, blazing star, and compass plant stand stiff above the grass, a winter food source for goldfinches, juncos, and sparrows.
Where to see it: the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve is austere and beautiful now, an expanse of pale, wind-combed grass under enormous winter skies. Walk a remnant or roadside and read the dried architecture and the green rosettes — they map exactly where spring's first wildflowers will rise when the warmth returns.
Garden This Month
December turns the Oklahoma garden toward rest, planning, and a surprising amount of cold-season harvest in the milder counties. Across much of the state, a row cover or low tunnel keeps hardy kale, collards, spinach, mache, and overwintered onions and garlic alive and even sweet through the cold, and the frost concentrates their sugars. Keep these protected through hard freezes and harvest on milder days.
This is a prime pruning and dormant-planting window: late in the month, prune dormant grapes, apples, pears, and peaches while the structure is bare and the sap is down, and plant bare-root and dormant trees, shrubs, and fruit, which establish well in Oklahoma's mild winter soil. Keep mulch heaped over garlic, strawberries, and perennial crowns, because the state's wild freeze-thaw swings and dry winter wind heave shallow roots out of the ground. Otherwise, December is for planning: order seeds before the popular varieties sell out, review what worked, and leave seed heads and brush standing for the wintering birds and overwintering insects. Drain and protect any remaining hoses and irrigation against the hard freezes.
Zone 6b (panhandle and far northwest): fully into a hard plains winter. Keep heavy mulch over garlic, strawberries, and perennials against the deep cold and drying wind, protect any covered greens, and use the long dormant evenings to plan, order seed, and prune dormant fruit trees only on the rare calm, mild day.
Zone 7a (central and northeastern Oklahoma): dormant, but a hardy harvest can continue under cover. Pick frost-sweetened kale, collards, and spinach from low tunnels, mulch garlic and perennials, plant dormant trees and shrubs on mild days, and begin pruning grapes and fruit trees late in the month.
Zone 7b (south-central and southeastern Oklahoma): the mild south still gardens lightly. Harvest cold-hardy greens under row cover, plant or transplant dormant trees, shrubs, and bare-root fruit, prune on mild days, and plan the early-spring garden the warm region can start in just weeks.
What's at the Farmers Market
December markets lean on Oklahoma's storage crops and winter high-tunnel growers, with a holiday focus. The keepers dominate: sweet potatoes, winter squash, pumpkins, onions, garlic, and root vegetables — carrots, beets, turnips, parsnips — all at their sweet, well-cured best. Frost-sweetened kale, collards, spinach, and Brussels sprouts from the field and tunnels round out the fresh offerings.
Fresh-crop pecans are the signature holiday product, abundant and at peak quality for baking, alongside jars of Oklahoma honey and sorghum, late-storage apples, and farm eggs. Holiday and winter markets in Oklahoma City and Tulsa add evergreen wreaths, cut greenery, and craft goods alongside the produce.
For selection and storage: keep sweet potatoes and winter squash firm and store them in a warm, dry, airy spot rather than the refrigerator, where cold gives sweet potatoes a hard core. Store root vegetables, tops removed, crisp in the crisper; keep onions and garlic cool, dark, and dry; refrigerate winter greens crisp and dry for prompt use; and store the fresh pecans cold and sealed so the rich oils stay sweet through the holiday baking season.
Night Sky This Month
December's long nights and dry, cold air bring the year's best meteor shower and the brilliant winter sky to Oklahoma. The remote Black Mesa country and Black Mesa State Park in the far panhandle offer the state's darkest skies, and the open Wichita Mountains near Lawton give central Oklahoma a superb dark horizon; clubs around Tulsa and Oklahoma City brave the cold for some of the year's clearest, steadiest skies, with full dark arriving by late afternoon.
The winter constellations dominate the evening. Orion climbs in the southeast, his belt pointing down to brilliant Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky, and up to the Pleiades cluster and orange Aldebaran. The bright yellow star Capella rides high overhead, and the winter Milky Way arches through the clear, frigid air on a moonless night.
The Geminid meteor shower, the richest and most reliable of the year, peaks around December 14, often producing dozens of bright meteors an hour from a dark site, radiating from near Gemini and visible all evening, not just after midnight — the year's premier shower if you can stand the cold. For this year's exact Geminid peak, moon phase, solstice timing, and planet positions from your Oklahoma latitude, see the printable Oklahoma night-sky guide.
Butterflies & Pollinators
December pauses the Oklahoma butterfly season, but the state's mild plains winter is not lifeless. On an exceptionally warm, still afternoon in the southern and central counties, one of the overwintering adults may briefly stir from its hiding place — a dark mourning cloak patrolling a sunlit Cross Timbers woodland edge, or a goatweed leafwing flickering up from the leaf litter and vanishing the instant it lands and folds into its dead-leaf shape.
Most of the month, though, the butterflies are tucked away and waiting. Across Oklahoma's woods, the mourning cloak, question mark, and eastern comma shelter behind loose post-oak bark, in woodpiles, and in rock crevices as overwintering adults; other species pass the winter as eggs glued to host twigs, as caterpillars, or as chrysalises hidden in the leaf litter and grass thatch of prairie and woodland. The colder, windier panhandle offers nothing on the wing now.
To prepare for the season ahead: December is the month to plan the butterfly garden, not to watch it. Leave the leaf litter, brush piles, standing stems, and seed heads undisturbed — they shelter the overwintering adults, eggs, and chrysalises that will become next spring's first fliers — and map out native milkweed, passionflower, and prairie nectar to plant when the warmth returns.
Trees This Month
December lays the Oklahoma tree world bare and reveals the sharp contrast between its regions. In the Cross Timbers, the gnarled, low-branched post oaks and blackjack oaks grip many of their leathery, dead russet-brown leaves through the winter, giving the rough timber its distinctive shaggy cold-season character, while the bottomland sycamores glow with white, flaking upper bark and the massive cottonwoods and bur oaks stand bare along the prairie rivers, their full architecture exposed.
The green in a December Oklahoma landscape is almost entirely eastern red cedar, the dark native juniper covering pastures, glades, and fencerows statewide, now heavy with the blue berry-like cones that feed wintering cedar waxwings, robins, and bluebirds and that shelter roosting birds through the cold. In the southeast, the shortleaf and loblolly pines hold the Ouachita foothills dark green, and the bald cypress stands leafless and gray over the lakes and swamps. The bare redbuds, dogwoods, and fruit trees already carry next spring's flower buds set tight along their twigs, waiting out the winter for the magenta and white show to come.
Go deeper with the Oklahoma guides
The complete Oklahoma birding, native-plant, wildflower, and night-sky guides — or the whole year in one bundle.
Same month elsewhere: December in Oregon · December in Pennsylvania · December in Rhode Island