Virginia Nature Guide: February 2026
February stirs Virginia's first signs of spring even as winter holds — woodcock begin their twilight sky-dances in the Piedmont, red maples redden the swamp edges, and waterfowl numbers swell to their season's peak on the coast. In the mild Tidewater the garden never fully sleeps.
What to look for this week
- Feeders are at their winter peak across Virginia — cardinals, Carolina chickadees, titmice, and white-throated sparrows work the seed while the last Christmas Bird Counts wrap up statewide.
- The Quadrantid meteor shower peaks in a short, sharp burst around January 3 — watch after midnight from a dark Blue Ridge overlook on Skyline Drive.
- A planning week — review last season and order seeds early, including the heat-tolerant tomato varieties Virginia's humid summers demand, before they sell out.
Birds This Month
February holds Virginia's wintering waterfowl at their peak even as the first spring stirrings begin. Tundra swans, snow geese, and diving ducks still pack Chincoteague and Back Bay, and bald eagles begin refurbishing nests and laying eggs along the James and Rappahannock — among the earliest nesters in the state. On warm late-February evenings, listen at dusk in damp Piedmont fields and clearcuts for the buzzy peent and spiraling sky-dance of the American woodcock, the season's first display.
Backyard northern cardinals and Carolina wrens begin singing in earnest, and tufted titmice add their clear peter-peter whistles to the mornings. Red-winged blackbirds return to coastal and Piedmont marshes, the males staking out cattails with bright shoulders, and turkey vultures and black vultures gather at communal roosts. Watch open country still for lingering northern harriers and the chance of an early red-shouldered hawk calling over the swamp woods.
What's Blooming
February brings Virginia's first true flowers, beginning in the mild Tidewater and creeping inland. In rich Piedmont and coastal woods, the spotted purple hoods of skunk cabbage are well up in seeps and swamp edges, and the tiny but fragrant flowers of spicebush swell toward bloom. In gardens and on old homesteads, snowdrops, winter aconite, the yellow ropes of winter jasmine, and the spidery blooms of native and Asian witch hazel open through the month.
By late February in the warmest coastal woods, the very first spring beauties and the nodding red-and-yellow bells of red maple flowers redden the swamp canopies — not a wildflower but the first wash of woodland color. Henbit and dead-nettle purple the fallow farm fields, and the first crocus and hellebores bloom in Piedmont gardens. In the cold Blue Ridge, snow may still lie deep and the first blooms wait another month.
Garden This Month
February is when Virginia's garden wakes from the bottom up — early in the mild Tidewater, later in the cold mountains. On any dry, workable day across the Piedmont and coast, this is the time to direct-sow the cold lovers: peas, spinach, radishes, arugula, and the first lettuce under row cover. Finish dormant pruning of apples, pears, peaches, grapes, and muscadines before the sap rises, and cut back ornamental grasses and last year's perennial stems.
Indoors, the seed-starting season begins in earnest: sow tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant under lights so they reach transplant size for the warm, humid Virginia summer, along with onions and slow brassicas. Top-dress beds with compost, turn the soil when it crumbles rather than smears, and renew mulch heaved by frost over strawberries and perennials. In the Tidewater you can already set out onion sets and seed potatoes, while the Blue Ridge gardener still waits on frozen ground and plans the spring layout.
Zone 6b (Blue Ridge foothills & valleys): still firmly dormant, with frozen ground and possible snow. Finish dormant pruning of apples and pears, start onions, leeks, and early brassicas under lights, and wait on outdoor sowing for another month.
Zone 7a (Piedmont & Shenandoah Valley): the soil begins to work on dry days. Sow peas, spinach, radishes, and arugula directly under row cover late in the month, prune dormant fruit trees and grapes, and start tomatoes and peppers indoors near month's end.
Zone 8a (Tidewater & lower coast): spring is arriving. Direct-sow peas, spinach, lettuce, beets, and carrots, set out onion sets and potatoes late in the month, and prune roses and overwintered shrubs as the buds swell.
What's at the Farmers Market
February markets in Virginia still lean on storage crops and protected greens, with the first hints of the turning season. Shenandoah Valley apples, sweet potatoes, potatoes, onions, winter squash, cabbage, and root vegetables hold steady from cold storage and the root cellar, while high tunnels and the mild Tidewater keep spinach, kale, collards, lettuce, and microgreens in fresh supply.
This is also late-winter oyster season on the Chesapeake — Virginia's revived aquaculture industry ships briny Rappahannock and Lynnhaven oysters through the cold months when the water is at its cleanest. Look too for value-added staples: honey, farmstead cheeses, country ham, cured Virginia peanuts, and apple cider. Choose firm, heavy storage apples and sweet potatoes, pick greens with crisp, unwilted leaves, and buy oysters tightly closed and kept cold on ice, using them the day you bring them home.
Night Sky This Month
February keeps the brilliant winter sky overhead while the cold, clear nights begin to shorten. Orion still dominates the south after dark, flanked by the Winter Hexagon and dazzling Sirius, while the Pleiades and the V-shaped Hyades in Taurus ride high overhead in the early evening. As the night deepens, the rising backwards-question-mark of Leo in the east signals that spring is coming.
With no major meteor shower this month, February is a fine time for steady deep-sky observing from a dark Virginia site — the Orion Nebula in the Hunter's sword and the Beehive Cluster in Cancer both show well in binoculars from the Blue Ridge overlooks or the open Eastern Shore. Away from the lights of Hampton Roads, Richmond, and Northern Virginia, the winter Milky Way still arches faintly to the southwest. The printable Virginia night-sky guide gives this year's exact planet positions and the best dark-sky sites for your region.
Butterflies & Pollinators
February usually keeps Virginia's butterflies in dormancy, but the first warm sunlit afternoons can coax the overwintering adults onto the wing. Mourning cloaks, eastern commas, and question marks all hibernate as adults tucked behind bark and in woodpiles, and in the mild Tidewater or a sheltered Piedmont hollow a 60-degree late-February day may bring a mourning cloak gliding along a sunlit woodland edge — often the year's first butterfly sighting.
The rest of the fauna waits. The eastern tiger and zebra swallowtails remain as chrysalises, the zebra's tied to the bare pawpaw thickets along the rivers, and the monarch and common buckeye are still far to the south, waiting to recolonize Virginia in spring. As the willows and red maples begin to flower along the swamp edges, they offer the first nectar and pollen that any early-flying overwintered butterfly will seek. Brush piles and undisturbed leaf litter remain the key winter shelter to protect.
Trees This Month
February shows the first stir of life in Virginia's bare woods. The earliest trees flower before they leaf: red maple hangs the swamp edges and Piedmont woods with tiny red blossoms, silver maple follows in the river bottoms, and the fuzzy gray catkins of pussy willow and the silver buds of American elm swell along the streams. The yellow ropes of spicebush brighten the understory of rich coves toward month's end.
The evergreens still hold the landscape: loblolly and Virginia pine dark on the coastal plain, eastern red cedar in the Piedmont fields, the high-peak red spruce and Fraser fir of the Blue Ridge, and the bare bald cypress of the Great Dismal Swamp beginning to redden at the buds. Watch the twig tips: the buds of flowering dogwood, Virginia's state tree, have set their distinctive flat, button-like flower buds, biding the weeks until April.
Go deeper with the Virginia guides
The complete Virginia birding, native-plant, wildflower, and night-sky guides — or the whole year in one bundle.
Same month elsewhere: February in Washington · February in West Virginia · February in Wisconsin