What to look for in nature in Alaska this December

When is the shortest day in Alaska, and when is the earliest sunset?

What is in the sky over Alaska this December?

• The Geminid meteor shower

  Night of Sunday, December 13, into Monday, December 14 · Anywhere dark; the radiant is in Gemini, high in the sky late at night

  The Geminids are usually the richest shower of the year. This year the International Meteor Organization expects the maximum around 5 a.m. Alaska time on December 14, which is ideal for Alaska: the radiant is still well up in a sky that will not brighten for hours yet. The moon is only a thin waxing crescent and sets early in the evening, so the whole night is dark. On paper the shower tops out near 150 meteors hourly; snowy yards near town lights will see far fewer, yet a good Geminid night still delivers. The rates are best in the small hours, when Gemini is highest.

• The Cold Moon, the year’s closest full moon

  Full at 4:28 p.m. on Wednesday, December 23 · Rises around sunset, which in Alaska means mid-afternoon

  No full moon this year sits nearer to Earth: perigee, the low point of the lunar orbit, falls roughly seven hours after the Cold Moon turns full, so it is a true supermoon. On snow, a full moon gives enough light to read animal tracks at midnight. It also drowns out the weak Ursid meteors, which peak on December 22.

• Planets for the long nights

  All month · Saturn in the south after dark; Venus, Jupiter and Mars before dawn

  Saturn is the only bright evening planet, low in the south and southwest after dark. Venus is a brilliant morning star, with the crescent moon and the star Spica nearby before dawn on December 4 and 5. Jupiter rises earlier every night and by late December is up by mid-evening, and Mars, also a morning object, slowly brightens. The swelling moon drifts past the Pleiades on December 21, though its glare hides most of the cluster’s stars.

• The aurora on the longest nights

  Any clear night; darkest skies around the new moon on December 8 · Interior and Arctic most of all

  Solar activity has eased since the 2024 maximum, yet strong storms still arrive with little warning. The University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute publishes a short-range aurora forecast. In December the limit is cloud and cold, not darkness, so pick a clear, still night and dress warmly.

When is the Christmas Bird Count in Alaska, and how can you join?

• Anchorage

  Date for 2026 not yet posted; last season’s count was held on December 14, 2025 · Anchorage count circle

  One of the biggest counts in the country by number of people. Last season 141 counters found 41 species and 13,225 birds in brutal wind, according to the Anchorage Daily News, including a record 90 bald eagles and the count’s first ruffed grouse. Watch Anchorage Audubon’s site for this year’s date and area leaders.

• Fairbanks

  Date for 2026 not yet posted; last season’s count was Saturday, December 27, 2025 · Fairbanks count circle, about 177 square miles

  Arctic Audubon organizes the count and welcomes both field teams and feeder watchers who live inside the circle. Feeder counters report, for each species, the largest group visible together. Ravens and ptarmigan are part of the Interior list, and Fairbanks had the nation’s top pine grosbeak count in the 125th season.

• Portage, a new circle

  Date for 2026 not yet set · Portage Valley, Twentymile River and part of Turnagain Pass

  The Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center started this count in 2025, the first time Portage birds were included in the national data. Volunteers meet at the center in the morning and compile results there in the afternoon; the center asks people to sign up by email.

Which owls can you see or hear in Alaska in December?

• Great horned owl courtship

  Intensive calling from December through March · Forest edges, river corridors and big-tree neighborhoods across mainland Alaska and Southeast

  The Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s Owlmanac says this is the one Alaska owl in which both male and female sing, and that intensive courtship calling runs from December through March. The song is a deep, rhythmic hoo, hoo-hoo, hoo, hoo. They hunt mostly at twilight, and snowshoe hares are their main prey, so their numbers rise and fall with the hares.

• Northern hawk owl

  All winter, by day · Tops of spruces beside clearings, burns and muskegs

  Unlike most owls, the hawk owl hunts in daylight, most actively early and late in the day, which in December means it is often perched up during the few bright hours. Look for a long-tailed, falcon-shaped silhouette on a spruce spire. Voles, lemmings and shrews are its usual food.

• Snowy owl

  Winter, numbers vary from year to year · Open tundra and coast in the west and north; occasionally farther south

  Alaska’s heaviest owl hunts both by day and by night and relies on lemmings and voles. When prey runs short, many snowy owls leave their usual range, which is why they turn up some winters as far away as the Lower 48. Only adult males are nearly pure white; females and young birds are heavily barred.

• Barred and boreal owls

  Barred owls court in winter · Barred owls in Southeast forests; boreal owls in the Interior and Southcentral

  In Alaska, barred owls live only in Southeast, where their “who cooks for you” call carries through the rainforest in winter. The tiny boreal owl is a bigger challenge; the Anchorage Christmas Bird Count turned up two in its 125th season, the highest count in the nation.

Where do Alaska’s eiders and sea ducks spend the winter?

• Spectacled eiders in the Bering Sea ice

  Through the winter, until the ice breaks up · Openings in the sea ice between St. Lawrence and St. Matthew islands

  For decades no one knew where these strikingly marked sea ducks went for the winter. ADF&G says the answer, found in 1995, is that the entire world population crowds into polynyas, openings in the pack ice, between St. Lawrence and St. Matthew islands, and dives through them for mollusks and crustaceans on the sea floor. Federal law lists the species as threatened.

• Steller’s eiders, harlequins and emperor geese at Kodiak

  All winter · Kodiak, the Alaska Peninsula and the Aleutians

  In the 125th Christmas Bird Count, Kodiak posted the nation’s highest totals of harlequin ducks, Steller’s eiders, pelagic cormorants and emperor geese. Harlequins, small and slate blue with white slashes, ride the surf right against rocky shores. Steller’s and spectacled eiders are both closed to hunting statewide.

• The ice edge itself

  December, as the pack builds · Norton Sound, the northern Bering Sea and Cook Inlet

  The National Weather Service’s Alaska Sea Ice Program issues a daily ice analysis that shows the pack growing south through the Bering Sea and ice floes spreading in upper Cook Inlet. How far the ice reaches matters to eiders, seals and coastal hunters alike; NOAA researchers warn that winters with very little Bering Sea ice, like 2018, are likely to recur one to three times a decade through the 2030s.

How do Alaska’s animals get through the cold and dark?

• Arctic ground squirrels: below freezing and still alive

  Hibernating from late summer until spring · Tundra and alpine slopes, from the Brooks Range to Denali and the Alaska Range

  These squirrels hibernate about eight months a year. ADF&G says their body temperature falls from about 99 °F to as low as 27 °F, colder than the freezing point of water, for bouts of up to three weeks. Between bouts they shiver themselves warm for a day or two, then cool off again.

• Voles under the snow

  Once the snow is deep enough to insulate · Fields, forest floors and lawns statewide

  Voles do not hibernate or even use torpor; a University of Alaska Anchorage biologist studying them in the Eagle River Valley put it simply, saying they just get through the winter as best they can. Their refuge is the subnivean space between snow and ground, where the temperature stays close to 32 °F however cold the air. ADF&G says their tunnels can run for hundreds of meters, and that weasels, foxes and owls hunt them right through the snow. Look for small holes in the snow surface and, in spring, the winding tracks of their tunnels in the flattened grass.

• Beavers under the ice

  All winter · Ponds and sloughs with lodges

  Beavers stay awake all winter. In fall they sink a pile of branches near the lodge, and every lodge or bank den has at least one entrance in water deep enough to stay ice-free, so the family can swim out under the ice to its pantry.

• Ptarmigan on willow buds

  All winter · Willow flats and shrubby valleys

  ADF&G says buds, twigs and catkins of willows make up four-fifths or more of a willow ptarmigan’s winter food. Look for flocks near the tops of willows sticking out of the snow.

What tracks can you find in the snow in December?

• Lynx

  All winter, often along hare trails · Boreal forest, Interior and Southcentral

  Big, round, lightly printed tracks with no claw marks. ADF&G says the lynx’s broad feet work like snowshoes, and that the cats depend on snowshoe hares, whose numbers swing through a cycle of eight to eleven years.

• Red fox

  All winter; breeding comes in February and March · Field edges, river bars, town greenbelts

  A neat, nearly straight line of small oval prints, one foot placed in front of the other. Where the line suddenly stops at a scuffed hole, the fox has pounced on a vole under the snow; voles appear to be its favorite food, according to ADF&G.

• Moose beds and trails

  All winter · Willow stands, riversides and road edges

  Deep post-holes in a line, oval melted beds in the snow, and freshly nipped willow tips at about chest height.

How do you tell Alaska’s evergreens apart in winter?

• White spruce and black spruce

  All year · Interior and Southcentral forest

  Both have short, stiff, four-sided needles that roll easily between your fingers, each attached to a little woody peg on the twig. The Denali Education Center describes white spruce as the larger tree, with light brown, elongated cones up to about two inches long, and the most common tree in central Alaska. Black spruce is smaller and often spindly, with rounded purple-brown cones clustered near the top, and it grows in bogs, muskegs and other wet ground, often over permafrost.

• Tamarack

  Bare in winter · Interior lowlands and muskegs

  The only northern conifer that drops its needles in fall. In December it stands bare among the spruce, studded with tiny cones and knobby spur shoots where next year’s needles will appear.

• The rainforest conifers of Southeast

  All year · Southeast and the Gulf coast

  Western hemlock forms the closed forest over most of Sitka National Historical Park, the National Park Service says, with occasional taller Sitka spruce standing above it; one spruce there is about 500 years old. Hemlock has soft, flat needles and a drooping leader at the top; Sitka spruce has sharp, stiff needles that prickle your palm.

• Cutting your own tree

  Before Christmas · Tongass National Forest and other public lands

  Last season the Tongass National Forest allowed one free tree per household for personal use with no permit, no larger than seven inches across at the stump, and not within 330 feet of an eagle nest or 100 feet of a salmon stream or road, and asked people to stay out of muskegs, where trees grow back slowly. Check for the 2026 notice, and for the rules on other forests and state land, before you go.

How cold and snowy is December in Alaska, and what might El Niño change?

When is lake and river ice safe in Alaska in December?

• Anchorage’s skating lakes

  Once the ice reaches a foot · Westchester Lagoon, Cheney Lake, Cuddy Family Midtown Park

  Anchorage Parks and Recreation maintains skating areas on these ponds only once the ice is 12 inches thick, and tells skaters on natural ice to be extra careful about thickness and conditions. Until the city clears an area, treat the ice as unchecked.

• Rivers and trails

  Through freeze-up · Interior and western rivers

  River ice can look solid over open leads and springs. The NWS Alaska-Pacific River Forecast Center gathers reports from observers on when rivers freeze and when local people begin traveling on them; those reports are a starting point, never a guarantee.

What can families do outside in Alaska this December?

Safety notes for December in Alaska