What to look for in nature in Connecticut this December

When is the Christmas Bird Count in Connecticut in 2026?

• New Haven, the 127th count

  Saturday, December 19 · The New Haven circle, including Hamden

  The New Haven Bird Club calls this year’s effort its 127th annual count, which makes it one of the oldest in the country. Chris Loscalzo compiles it, and the club welcomes people who can give a few hours in the field or who live inside the circle and want to report what visits the yard. Everyone is invited to the compilation dinner at 5 p.m. at the Whitney Center in Hamden, where the day’s species list is read out. For the history first, the club’s December 10 meeting at 7 p.m. is a talk by Steve Broker on the count’s long record.

• Hartford, centered on the Old State House

  Sunday, December 20 · A circle with a 7.5-mile radius around downtown Hartford

  Hartford Audubon counts the next day, with Jay Kaplan organizing area captains for each slice of a circle that takes in river meadows, reservoirs and suburban feeders as well as the city. Give it an hour or the whole day; reach the organizer through the Connecticut Ornithological Association’s calendar listing.

• The rest of the state’s circles

  Dates set by each compiler, December 14 to January 5 · From Greenwich to Napatree, Barkhamsted to Old Lyme

  Last season the state’s counts were spread over seven days, from mid-December weekends to the first Sunday in January. The 2026–27 schedule was not yet posted when this guide was written; the Connecticut Ornithological Association’s CBC page lists every circle with its date and compiler once the compilers set them, so pick the one nearest home.

Where can you see bald eagles in Connecticut in December?

• Shepaug Dam, Southbury

  Usually from the second half of December to mid-March · Housatonic River below the Shepaug hydro station

  FirstLight, which operates the dam, describes the site as possibly the largest concentration of wintering eagles in New England, and visitors have seen 20 or more in a single day. The turbines keep the water below the dam moving and ice-free, so fish are always within reach. Viewing is from a blind with spotting scopes and volunteers, on Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays; admission is free, but you must book ahead online. Last winter the season opened December 21, and one recent season it did not open until December 28; FirstLight posts each year’s dates when reservations open, and it asks visitors to call 860-895-6468 in doubtful weather to check whether the blind is open.

• The lower Connecticut River

  December through early March · Essex, Deep River, Haddam and the river towns; Long Island Sound coves

  Along the tidal lower river, eagles sit in tall trees on the banks between fishing flights; scan the dead treetops and the edges of any ice. WSHU, reporting in 2025, put Connecticut’s breeding population at 86 pairs as of 2023, so resident eagles and northern visitors share the river in winter.

What winter wildlife arrives on the Connecticut shore in December?

• Harbor seals on the rocks

  December to March · Exposed rocks at low tide; Falkner Island off Guilford; the eastern Sound

  Menunkatuck Audubon Society in Guilford says harbor seals arrive along Connecticut’s shore in December and stay until March. Five to six feet long, gray or silver with dark spots, they haul out together on bare rocks as the tide drops; look from a headland at low tide with binoculars. Seals are protected by the federal Marine Mammal Protection Act, so keep well back. If one on a beach looks sick or hurt, call the Mystic Aquarium or the Maritime Aquarium at Norwalk rather than approach it.

• Snowy owls, some years

  From late November in flight years · Milford Point, Stratford’s marshes and Sikorsky airport, other wide beaches

  Snowy owls hunt open, flat ground that looks like tundra, which on the Connecticut coast means beaches, marshes and airfields. In the big flight of 2013, Connecticut Audubon reported birds at its Milford Point Coastal Center and around Sikorsky airport in Stratford by the day before Thanksgiving. Other winters bring none at all. If one turns up, watch from far enough away that it keeps its eyes half closed; an owl that keeps flushing burns energy it needs to survive the winter.

• Sea ducks, loons and the winter beach

  All month · Hammonasset Beach State Park, Sherwood Island State Park, Lighthouse Point

  The scoters, long-tailed ducks and red-breasted mergansers that arrived in November are now settled for the winter, with common loons in plain gray winter dress among them. A calm, gray morning is best for scanning. The New Haven Bird Club’s first-Wednesday walks at Hammonasset on December 2 and Sherwood Island on January 6 are an easy way to learn them with experienced leaders.

Why do you hear owls hooting in Connecticut in December?

• Great horned owls claiming territory

  Dusk and the first hours of darkness, December into February · Mature woods with clearings and edges, most commonly in the western and central parts of the state

  Writing in DEEP’s Connecticut Wildlife magazine, Paul Fusco of the Wildlife Division described the classic “hoot-owl” call as a deep series of three to seven hoots, made as males lay claim to territories and as courtship moves toward nesting. Neighboring males answer from their own perches, so on a still evening you may hear two or three. Territories and nest sites are claimed by early winter, and nesting follows shortly after. The owls do not build their own nests; they borrow old ones made by hawks, crows, ospreys or herons. One or two eggs hatch in mid- to late winter, often while snow is still on the ground.

• How to find one

  Just after sunset · Forest edges, treetops at the edge of a field

  Fusco suggests dusk as the best time to see one, when the owl leaves its daytime hiding place for a high perch to scan for prey. By day, a crowd of crows mobbing one spot in the woods often gives a roosting owl away.

• Barred and screech-owls too

  Calm nights · Swamps and river woods (barred); suburban yards and old trees (eastern screech-owl)

  The barred owl’s rhythmic “who cooks for you” carries across wet woods, and the little eastern screech-owl’s descending whinny can come from any big old tree in a suburban yard. Please don’t play recordings over and over to call an owl in; it pulls the bird away from hunting at a hard time of year.

How do Connecticut’s animals get through the winter?

• Bears in their dens, cubs on the way

  Denned from late November; cubs born late December into early January · Statewide, most in the northwest

  DEEP says most Connecticut bears den from late November through mid-March, under fallen trees, in brush piles and rock ledges and sometimes under a deck. They are not true hibernators: body temperature drops and the heart slows, but they can rouse on mild, snowless days. Cubs are born in the den around the turn of the year, blind and toothless. Because bears are least active from mid-December through February, DEEP allows bird feeders in that window only where no bears are around.

• Woodchucks fast asleep

  From late October until March · Burrows below the frost line

  The woodchuck is Connecticut’s textbook hibernator. DEEP’s fact sheet says most have begun their winter sleep by the end of October, curled up in grass-lined nests below the frost line, with heart rate, breathing and metabolism greatly reduced as they live off stored fat. They wake slowly in March.

• Wood frogs, frozen solid

  All winter · A few centimeters under the leaf litter near woodland pools

  Wood frogs do not dig deep. A Yale School of the Environment study at Yale-Myers Forest in Tolland County notes that they overwinter only 2 to 10 centimeters below the soil surface and can survive with up to 70 percent of their body water turned to ice. Ice forms around the cells, not inside them; the heart stops beating until the frog warms. In late winter they revive and head for the vernal pools in late winter, among the first frogs to call.

• Bucks dropping antlers

  Mid-December to late January · Woods, field edges and trails

  DEEP says white-tailed deer shed their antlers from mid-December to late January, after the rut winds down, and that in winter they browse hardwood twigs and buds and the needles of white pine and hemlock. Rodents gnaw dropped antlers for the calcium, so a fresh, unchewed one is a lucky find.

• Tracks in the first snow

  The morning after any snowfall · Trail edges, stone walls, stream banks

  A fresh inch of snow records the night’s traffic. Look along stone walls for the neat single-file line of a red fox and the paired bounds of a gray squirrel, and along streams for mink and raccoon. Draw one print and the pattern of four on the tracks plate of the Naturalist’s Field Journal, with the age of the snow. Riverbank mud works on snowless days.

Which trees and shrubs stay green or bright in a Connecticut winter?

• Mountain laurel, the state flower

  Leaves green all winter · Rocky hillsides and dry oak woods statewide, especially in the hills

  The General Assembly made mountain laurel Connecticut’s state flower in 1907. In June it is all pink and white; in December it is the thicket of glossy, leathery, oval leaves that keeps a hillside green under bare oaks. Go Botany notes that its leaves stay green all winter, and in the gray months a laurel slope is often the brightest green in sight. Snow piles on the broad leaves and bends whole shrubs to the ground, then they spring back as it melts.

• Winterberry, the native holly that drops its leaves

  Red fruit from fall into midwinter · Swamp edges, pond shores and wet thickets

  Winterberry loses its leaves in autumn but keeps its bright red berries, which glow along wetland margins all winter. Only female plants carry fruit, and Connecticut Audubon notes that over 48 species of birds eat the berries, among them robins, cedar waxwings, bluebirds and mockingbirds. The fruit often hangs on until a flock of robins strips a whole shrub in an afternoon, so check one patch each week and note when the berries go.

• Eastern hemlock, and the woolly adelgid

  All year; adelgid wool most visible March to May · Cool ravines and north-facing slopes

  Hemlock is the soft, flat-needled evergreen of shaded stream valleys, with two white lines under each needle. The hemlock woolly adelgid, a tiny sap-feeding insect first reported to the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station in New Haven in 1985, has weakened stands across the state. DEEP says its white woolly egg sacs are easiest to spot from March to May, and that severe cold can kill enough adelgids for the trees to recover the next spring, so a bitter December is, in that one sense, good news for hemlocks.

When is the earliest sunset in Connecticut?

How cold and snowy is December in Connecticut, and what could El Niño mean this winter?

What is in Connecticut’s night sky in December 2026?

• The Geminids, under a dark sky

  Night of Sunday, December 13, into Monday, December 14 · Anywhere dark; the radiant near Castor and Pollux is high after midnight

  Under a perfect sky the Geminids could deliver around 150 meteors an hour at their December 14 maximum, by the International Meteor Organization’s figures, which makes them the richest shower of the year. Real skies with some light pollution give far fewer, but a few dozen an hour from a dark field in the Northwest Hills or the Quiet Corner is realistic. A thin crescent moon goes down in the evening and leaves the sky moonless; meteors pick up through the night and peak around 2 a.m., with Gemini high overhead. Dress very warmly and lie back on a pad.

• The Cold Moon, the closest of 2026

  Full at 8:28 p.m. Wednesday, December 23 · Rising in the east-northeast near sunset

  Full moon and perigee, the moon’s closest approach, fall roughly seven hours apart this time, so EarthSky and BBC Sky at Night both rank this as the nearest full supermoon of 2026, about 356,700 km from Earth. It looks full on Christmas Eve too. Catch it rising over the Sound or a frozen reservoir, and on the evening of December 21 look for the bright gibbous moon near the Pleiades.

• Venus at dawn, Saturn at dusk

  All month · Venus southeast before sunrise; Saturn south and southwest after dark

  Venus is a dazzling morning star, climbing higher each week toward its greatest distance from the sun in early January; at dawn on December 4 and 5 the crescent moon passes close to it and the star Spica. Mars and Jupiter are morning planets in Leo, with Jupiter rising by mid-evening late in the month. In early evening Saturn is the bright planet on show, lower in the southwest each week.

• The solstice, and a look ahead

  Monday, December 21, 3:50 p.m.; Quadrantids night of January 3 · Sunset point on the southwest horizon

  At the solstice the sun sets at its farthest point south along the horizon; mark it against a tree or rooftop and check again in March. The Ursids, around December 22, are washed out by the nearly full moon, but the Quadrantids peak late on January 3, 2027, near new moon, and Comet Encke should reach binocular brightness in late January. With the solar cycle now declining but still lively, a faint aurora low in the north is possible on a long December night, though none can be forecast this far ahead.

What can Connecticut families do outdoors in December?

Safety notes for December in Connecticut