Virginia Nature Guide: September 2026
September is the great migration funnel in Virginia — hawks, monarchs, and songbirds pour down the Eastern Shore to pool at Kiptopeke, the asters and goldenrod peak, and the first cool fronts break the summer heat. It is the most exciting wildlife month on the coast.
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
September is Virginia's premier migration month, and the spectacle centers on the Eastern Shore. At Kiptopeke State Park, the funnel where the peninsula narrows toward the Chesapeake Bay mouth, the season's first great push of raptors streams south — broad-winged hawks in spiraling 'kettles' of hundreds, plus sharp-shinned and Cooper's hawks, ospreys, bald eagles, kestrels, merlins, and peregrine falcons. The same point concentrates a torrent of songbird migrants in the morning flights.
Songbird migration peaks statewide: waves of warblers — magnolia, black-throated blue, blackpoll, Cape May, American redstart, and many more — move through the woods with scarlet tanagers, rose-breasted grosbeaks, red-eyed vireos, and thrushes. Shorebird migration continues at Chincoteague, and the first wave of returning waterfowl and the early swallows-massing spectacles fill the marshes. Inland, hawk-watchers gather on the Blue Ridge overlooks for the ridge flight.
What's Blooming
September is the climax of Virginia's autumn wildflower season, when the asters and goldenrod blanket the meadows. Dozens of aster species — the deep purple New England aster, the sky-blue smooth and heart-leaved asters, and clouds of white calico and frost asters — bloom alongside the full range of goldenrods, turning fields and roadsides into rivers of purple and gold. Joe-pye weed, ironweed, boneset, and wild sunflowers stand tall among them.
This late bloom is critical fuel for the migrating monarchs and is alive with pollinators all day. Along streams the last cardinal flower and great lobelia linger, the turtlehead opens its pink-white hoods in wet ground, and the Tidewater marshes show seashore mallow and the lingering swamp rose-mallow. In the woods the white spires of black cohosh and the blue of bottle gentian close out the year's understory flowers as the canopy begins to color.
Garden This Month
September is a rejuvenating month in the Virginia garden as the first cool fronts break the summer heat and growth surges back. The summer crops give their last big push — tomatoes, peppers, okra, eggplant, beans, and the sweet potatoes nearing harvest — while the fall garden hits its stride. Keep direct-sowing spinach, lettuce, arugula, radishes, and turnips, tend the maturing broccoli, cabbage, kale, and collards, and thin earlier sowings of carrots and beets.
This is the ideal time to plant garlic for next summer's harvest, to sow cover crops like crimson clover and winter rye in emptied beds, and to set out cool-season transplants for a steady fall and winter supply, especially in the mild Tidewater. Divide and plant perennials now so they root before winter, and plant spring-flowering bulbs — daffodils, crocus, and tulips — as the soil cools. Pull and compost spent, disease-free summer plants, and harvest and dry herbs and any seed you want to save.
Zone 6b (Blue Ridge foothills & valleys): the first frost approaches in the mountains. Harvest the last warm crops, keep fall greens and root crops growing under row cover, and plant garlic and spring bulbs as the soil cools.
Zone 7a (Piedmont & Shenandoah Valley): prime fall planting and harvest. Sow more spinach, lettuce, and radishes, tend the maturing fall brassicas, plant garlic and cover crops, and enjoy the renewed growth as the heat finally breaks.
Zone 8a (Tidewater & lower coast): the long fall garden is in full swing. Keep direct-sowing greens, carrots, and beets, set out more brassica transplants, and harvest the heat crops while the weather eases — frost is still two months away.
What's at the Farmers Market
September markets in Virginia bridge summer's last bounty and autumn's arrival. The summer crops linger — tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, okra, sweet corn, melons, summer squash, and beans — as the fall harvest arrives: winter squash, pumpkins, sweet potatoes, greens, broccoli, and the first cool-season lettuces. The fruit shifts decisively to apples as the Shenandoah Valley orchards begin their long run, with the last peaches and the first Concord and wine-country grapes.
The first green peanuts from Southside Virginia's Wakefield–Suffolk belt arrive for boiling, and the Chesapeake blue crab harvest stays strong, with the new oyster season opening as the water cools. Choose apples that are firm and heavy and store them cold, away from other produce; pick winter squash with hard, unblemished rinds and a corky stem; and select sweet potatoes that are firm and unbruised, curing them warm before storing in a cool, dark place.
Night Sky This Month
September brings the autumn equinox around the 22nd, when day and night balance and the nights finally lengthen into comfortable, mild stargazing. The Summer Triangle still rides high overhead in the evening, but the autumn stars rise in the east — the Great Square of Pegasus, the W of Cassiopeia, and the chained princess Andromeda, carrying the faint glow of the Andromeda Galaxy, the most distant object visible to the naked eye, easily found from a dark Virginia site.
The summer Milky Way is still glorious in the early evening, arching from Sagittarius in the southwest through Cygnus overhead. With no major meteor shower this month, September favors steady deep-sky observing from the Blue Ridge overlooks or the dark Eastern Shore — the Andromeda Galaxy, the Double Cluster in Perseus, and the bright globular clusters of summer all show well in binoculars. The printable Virginia night-sky guide lists this year's planet positions and the darkest viewing sites for your region.
Butterflies & Pollinators
September is the month of the great monarch migration in Virginia, and the show is unforgettable on the Eastern Shore. As cold fronts push through, monarchs stream south and pool at the Kiptopeke peninsula, where they roost in the trees by the hundreds before crossing the Chesapeake Bay mouth on their way to the Mexican overwintering forests — Kiptopeke runs a long-term monarch tagging program there. Nectaring monarchs fuel up at seaside goldenrod all along the coast.
The rest of the fauna is still rich in the late-summer flowers. Migratory cloudless sulphurs and common buckeyes stream south along the coast in big numbers, long-tailed and fiery skippers work the asters, and painted ladies, American ladies, red admirals, and question marks feed heavily before fall. The swallowtails wind down as the last broods fly. A garden full of late asters, goldenrod, and zinnias is a monarch fueling station now — leave it blooming as long as the warmth holds.
Trees This Month
September starts the turn of Virginia's forest, beginning in the wetlands and the high Blue Ridge. The black gum (tupelo) and sumacs are already deep red along the swamp edges and roadsides, the flowering dogwood (the state tree) glows maroon in the understory and hangs heavy with red berries, and the sassafras begins its orange-and-scarlet show. The first cool-front colors touch the highest peaks of Shenandoah, where sugar maples and mountain ash start to flame weeks ahead of the lowlands.
The mast crop drops in earnest now: acorns rain from the oaks, the hickories and black walnuts fall, and the persimmons ripen sweet after the first chill. The tulip trees begin to yellow and the bald cypress of the Great Dismal Swamp take on a coppery cast at the needle tips. The autumn color builds slowly downhill and seaward through the month, setting the stage for October's full Blue Ridge spectacle along Skyline Drive.
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: September in Washington · September in West Virginia · September in Wisconsin