What to look for in nature in California this December

When do gray whales start passing California?

• The Point Vicente census

  Daily from December 1 to late May, daylight hours · Point Vicente Interpretive Center, Rancho Palos Verdes

  For more than four decades volunteers with the Los Angeles chapter of the American Cetacean Society have counted every gray whale they can see from the center’s patio, 125 feet above the water, seven days a week. The season that ended on May 25, 2026, their 42nd, logged 214 grays going south, including 17 calves, their second-lowest southbound tally, and a record-low 445 heading north. The chapter posts each day’s total on its website, so you can see whether the whales are moving before you drive out.

• Cabrillo National Monument

  Whales from mid to late December; most in mid-January · Point Loma, San Diego

  The park says gray whales are visible off Point Loma “from mid- to late December through March,” and that the migration peaks in mid-January. Its recommended lookouts are the heights near the Kelp Forest Overlook and the Old Point Loma Lighthouse. Face west, scan slowly, and watch for a low, bushy puff of spray, then the slow roll of a mottled gray back with no dorsal fin.

• How many whales are out there

  Latest estimate: winter 2025/2026 · The eastern North Pacific

  NOAA Fisheries estimates 15,930 to 20,530 gray whales for 2025/2026, a rise from about 11,700 to 14,200 a year earlier, but calf production has stayed low since 2019 and the agency treats the jump with caution.

When are elephant seal pups born in California?

• Piedras Blancas

  Every day; first pups by mid-December · Highway 1, north of San Simeon

  The rookery’s viewing areas are open daily with no fee and no reservation, and volunteer docents are often on hand to answer questions. Watch a female with a newborn: the pup is black, loose-skinned and bleating, and the mother will snap at any seal that crowds them. Afternoons are often cold and windy, so bring a jacket.

• Año Nuevo State Park

  Closed December 1–14; guided walks from December 15 · San Mateo County coast, near Pescadero

  The park closes its natural preserve for the first two weeks of December while the bulls and the pregnant females arrive, then runs docent-led walks every day from December 15 to the end of March. You can only see the breeding colony on one of these walks. They book on ReserveCalifornia 56 days ahead, so dates in mid-February open in late December.

• Point Reyes

  Bulls in December; road closure from December 15 · Elephant Seal Overlook near Chimney Rock; South Beach Overlook; Drakes Beach

  At Point Reyes the bulls arrive in December to stake out the beaches, and the females follow to give birth. From December 15 to March 31 the park closes the road past the Chimney Rock gate down to the Fish Dock, and the beaches next to it, to protect nursing pups. Trained docents staff the Elephant Seal Overlook and Drakes Beach on weekends and holidays.

How do I join a Christmas Bird Count in California?

Where are the cranes, swans and geese in December?

• Sandhill cranes at their peak

  Highest numbers around mid-December · Cosumnes River Preserve, Staten Island Road, Woodbridge Ecological Reserve

  The Cosumnes River Preserve says its cranes reach their maximum around the middle of December and stay until mid-March. Three migratory subspecies winter here: the lesser, at 3 to 4 feet, the Canadian, and the greater, at 4 to 5 feet. Watch at sunrise, when they lift off to feed, or at sunset, when they come back to roost. CDFW’s guided tours at Woodbridge usually run on the first three weekends of each month from October through February, which in December would mean the 5th–6th, 12th–13th and 19th–20th; they begin an hour and a half before sundown and take roughly two hours. The 2026–27 schedule was not posted when we checked, so confirm dates and booking with the department. Visitors 16 and older need a one-day lands pass ($5.66).

• Tundra swans

  In good numbers from early December; leave in mid-February · Sacramento Valley rice fields, the Delta, the Klamath Basin

  The Pacific Flyway Council calls the Sacramento Valley and the Delta the “primary winter terminus” of the western population of tundra swans, and on average California holds about 83 percent of them in winter. Since the late 1990s they have spread into the flooded rice of the lower American basin. A Forest Service review notes they are not present in great numbers near San Francisco Bay until early December, and in the Klamath Basin not until late November or early December. Look for big white birds with all-white wings, straight necks and black bills, many showing a yellow fleck before the eye; their call is a mellow, high whoo.

Where do ladybugs spend the winter in California?

• Pinnacles National Park

  Through the winter, until warm spring days break the clusters up · Bear Gulch Trail, Old Pinnacles Trail, Moses Spring Picnic Area

  The park says the beetles overwinter “under fallen leaves and ground litter near streams,” and that the best places to look are along the Bear Gulch and Old Pinnacles trails and at the Moses Spring picnic area. On a windless day of 55 °F or more, the lowest temperature at which they can fly, they start to stir; in early spring they disperse to mate and return to the valleys. Look in the leaf litter and on the bases of shrubs beside the creek, and do not disturb them.

• Reinhardt Redwood Regional Park

  Fall and winter · Stream Trail, Oakland hills

  The East Bay Regional Park District’s park brochure says thousands of convergent ladybugs can often be seen along the Stream Trail in fall and winter, in the cool redwood canyon of the Oakland hills. Walk the trail slowly and scan leaves, fence posts and fallen logs at the creek side. Look without touching, and if a cluster spills onto the path, step around it. Some winters bring far more beetles than others, so treat any cluster as a bonus.

• The monarchs’ New Year count

  December 26, 2026 to January 10, 2027 · Overwintering groves from Mendocino to San Diego

  By December the monarchs in the coastal groves have stopped arriving and are waiting out the cold. The Xerces Society’s late-season count window opens the day after Christmas; set beside the Thanksgiving tally, it shows how many butterflies held on in each grove through the first storms.

• Coho on the redds

  After the December rains · Lagunitas Creek, west Marin

  Some animals do not wait out the winter at all. Marin Water’s fisheries staff call December “coho salmon time” on Lagunitas Creek, when fish that held in deep pools through the fall move up on each rise of water to spawn, and then die. Stand at the Leo T. Cronin fish viewing area or along Devil’s Gulch in Samuel P. Taylor State Park, and look for pale, scoured patches of gravel where a female has dug her nest.

What is flowering and fruiting in a California December?

• Redwoods in flower

  December and January · Coast redwood groves, from Big Sur to the Oregon line

  California State Parks says coast redwoods “flower during the wet and rainy months of December and January.” There are no petals: look at the branch tips for tiny male cones, which shed clouds of yellow pollen on a dry, breezy day after rain, and for the even smaller female cones that will ripen next fall into woody cones about an inch long. Most new redwoods start as sprouts around the base of an old tree rather than from seed, which is how the circles called fairy rings form.

• Manzanita bells and nesting hummingbirds

  Bloom from winter into spring; nesting may start in December · Chaparral and foothills; any yard with flowers

  Bigberry manzanita, a chaparral shrub with smooth red bark and blue-gray leaves, flowers in winter and spring, and Calscape lists 81 species of native bee that use it. Anna’s hummingbirds, which stay all year in much of California, nest in the middle of winter: Audubon says they may begin in December, or even earlier. The female builds a cup of plant fibers and spider silk, camouflaged with lichen, and lays two white eggs. Listen for the male’s courtship dive, which ends in a loud, sharp pop.

• Mistletoe on the bare oaks

  Easiest to see now · Valley oaks, cottonwoods, walnuts, street trees

  Once the leaves are down, the round green clumps of native mistletoe show up in deciduous trees across the lowlands. UC’s pest management program says the small, sticky, pale berries form between October and December and that birds spread the seeds by leaving them on branches. At Hastings Reserve in Carmel Valley, researchers found that western bluebirds defend clumps of oak mistletoe as winter feeding territories, so a mistletoe-laden valley oak is a good place to wait for blue.

• Mushrooms after rain, and a fungus fair

  Sunday, December 6, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. · El Camino High School, 1320 Mission Road, South San Francisco

  A week or two after a soaking storm, the oak woodlands and pine forests of the coast fill with mushrooms. The Mycological Society of San Francisco’s annual Fungus Fair brings displays of locally gathered fungi, identification tables, talks and children’s activities, across the street from the South San Francisco BART station. Never eat a wild mushroom on anyone’s say-so but an expert’s in person.

How much rain and snow does California get in December, and what will El Niño do?

When are the king tides in California this December?

When is the earliest sunset in California?

What is in California’s night sky in December?

• The Geminids, the best shower of the year

  Night of Sunday, December 13, into Monday the 14th · Anywhere dark; look high in the east and overhead

  The International Meteor Organization expects the Geminid maximum around 14:00 UT on December 14, which is 6 a.m. Pacific, so California’s best viewing is the night just before. The IMO’s ideal-sky figure is about 150 an hour; a suburban yard sees far fewer, though a dark desert site can still deliver one a minute after midnight. The waxing crescent moon sets in the first half of the evening and leaves the sky dark. The radiant, near the bright pair of stars Castor and Pollux, climbs all night and stands highest around 2 a.m. Geminids are fairly slow and often bright, which makes them a good shower for beginners.

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

  Wednesday, December 23, at moonrise · Low in the east-northeast at sunset

  Full at 5:28 p.m. Pacific, just after California’s sunset, so the moon comes up round and copper-colored in the dusk. The moon swings nearest Earth that same night, around midnight Pacific, so California sees 2026’s biggest-looking full moon, a supermoon on every common yardstick. The Ursid meteors peak the night before, on the 22nd, but this bright moon drowns them out.

• Venus, the morning star

  Before sunrise, all month · Southeast, before dawn

  Venus dominates the dawn, far brighter than anything else in the sky but the moon, and keeps climbing away from the sun until its greatest elongation on January 3. A slim crescent moon joins it before dawn on December 4, with Spica, Virgo’s brightest star, in between, and slides closer to Venus on the 5th. Little Mercury fades into the dawn glow by mid-month.

• Jupiter and Mars

  Jupiter rises in mid-evening by late December · East in the evening; high in the south before dawn

  Jupiter, in Leo, rises earlier each night and by the end of the month is up by mid-evening, the brightest point in the eastern sky after dark. Mars, much fainter and reddish, is a morning planet, brightening slowly through December. The ringed planet Saturn is alone in the evening southwest after dusk, and California loses it in the west some four hours after sundown as the year ends.

What can families do outdoors in California in December?

What should I watch out for in California in December?