What to look for in nature in Delaware this December

Where do the snow geese and ducks spend December in Delaware?

• Snow geese in the winter flock

  All month; most active at first light · The Bombay Hook impoundments and the farm fields around them

  Audubon’s advice is to come at dawn, when the flocks rise together with a roar of wings and head out to feed. Drive the loop slowly and stop often. When a resting flock bursts up without warning, look around for the cause: bald eagles hunt waterfowl, especially in winter, according to the Chesapeake Bay Program. Scan the white mass for the darker blue-morph geese too.

• Pintails, buffleheads and black ducks

  December through February · Impoundments at Bombay Hook and Prime Hook; mill ponds and the Inland Bays

  Male northern pintails are the elegant ones, with a chocolate head, a white stripe running up the neck and a long, needle-pointed tail. American black ducks look like very dark mallards with a pale face. On deeper water look for little black-and-white buffleheads diving and popping back up.

• Swans, loons and cormorants elsewhere

  All winter · Trap Pond; Holts Landing; Fox Point on the Delaware River

  State Parks lists Trap Pond’s baldcypress swamp as a winter gathering place for tundra swans and many ducks. At Holts Landing, on Indian River Bay, the crabbing pier is a good place to scan for loons, grebes and ducks in winter, and at Fox Point, north of Wilmington, great and double-crested cormorants gather in winter roosts along the river.

When do bald eagles start nesting in Delaware?

• A recovery you can see from the car

  Year-round; nest building from December · Tall trees near water in all three counties

  When DNREC biologists flew over the state in March 2023 they checked 173 known or reported nest sites and confirmed 121 as eagle nests, 82 of them active. In 1987 the state had only four active nests. Eagles favor the tallest trees close to water, where fish are easy to reach, and the nests are enormous: in the Chesapeake region they can weigh up to two tons after years of additions.

• Courtship flights

  Early winter · Over the bayshore marshes and rivers

  Watch for pairs flying together, and now and then for the famous display in which two eagles lock talons high in the air and tumble toward the ground, breaking apart just before they hit the water. Young eagles, mottled brown all over until they are about five years old, hold no territory and roam the region looking for food, so many of the eagles you see around the refuges in winter are these brown birds.

• Report a nest

  Any time · Statewide

  DNREC asks people who find an eagle nest to log it through the online reporting form on its eagle survey page; the reports guide the next aerial count. Watch from a distance, preferably from your car, and leave if the birds call or flush.

Where can you see short-eared owls in Delaware?

• Owls that hunt in daylight

  The last hour before dark, and at first light · Port Mahon Road and Little Creek Wildlife Area; marsh edges at Bombay Hook and Prime Hook

  Audubon’s field guide describes a pale, buff-colored owl about 16 inches long with dark patches around the eyes and ear tufts you rarely notice. It hunts by coursing low over grass and marsh, sometimes hovering, then dropping onto a vole, with loose, floppy wingbeats that make it look like a huge moth. Park where it is safe, stay in or beside the car, and wait: the birds often appear one after another just as the sun goes down.

• A bayshore field trip, Saturday, December 5

  1 to 5 p.m. · Pickering Beach to Port Mahon, starting at Little Creek Wildlife Area’s Main Tract

  The Delaware Ornithological Society’s afternoon trip works its way along the public lands of the bayshore for migrants and winter residents, beginning with forest songbirds and raptors and ending on the marsh in the late light. Check the society’s calendar for meeting details before you go.

How do you join a Christmas Bird Count in Delaware?

When do seals come to Delaware’s coast?

• Harbor seals

  Winter into spring · Lewes breakwaters; Indian River Inlet; now and then on a beach

  The common one. NOAA Fisheries puts adults at four to five feet, and the Chesapeake Bay Program points to the dog-like face, V-shaped nostrils and a tan or gray coat with dark spots. On land it humps along on its belly like a caterpillar. In winter up to 30 percent of its weight is blubber, which is why a seal can doze on a cold rock in a north wind.

• Gray seals

  Winter · The breakwaters at the mouth of the bay

  NOAA Fisheries describes gray seals as much bigger, seven to eight feet long and up to 850 pounds, with a long, horse-like head. Their pups are born from December to February on colonies farther north; the region’s population has been growing by several percent a year.

• A seal on the beach

  Any time in winter · Anywhere from Fenwick Island to the bay beaches

  A seal resting on the sand is normal behavior, not a sign of trouble. MERR asks people to stay 150 to 300 feet away, keep dogs leashed and well back, and never try to feed, cover or push the animal toward the water; the Marine Mammal Protection Act makes it illegal to harass one. If the seal looks injured or thin, or people are crowding it, call MERR’s 24-hour line at 302-228-5029.

How do Delaware’s animals get through the winter?

• Bats asleep in the old forts

  Roughly November to March · Fort Delaware on Pea Patch Island; Fort DuPont near Delaware City

  DNREC says the old masonry forts on the Delaware River give bats the cool, humid, cave-like conditions they need to hibernate. Five species that hibernate live in the state: little brown, big brown, tri-colored, northern long-eared and eastern small-footed bats. White-nose syndrome, a fungal disease that thrives in the same cold, damp places, was first confirmed killing bats at both forts in 2012, and DNREC’s winter surveys at Fort Delaware counted 40 percent fewer bats in 2015 than in 2013. If you find bats in an attic or outbuilding this winter, leave them be and report the colony to DNREC.

• Foxes that store their dinner

  All winter, mostly at dawn and dusk · Field edges, parks and suburbs statewide

  Red foxes stay active all winter. The Chesapeake Bay Program notes that a fox can hear a vole moving under the ground, then leaps high and comes down on it with its forepaws; extra food is often buried and dug up later. Listen at night for the short, high series of barks, often mistaken for an owl.

• Otters on the move

  Dawn and evening · Tidal creeks, Trap Pond, the Brandywine and the bayshore

  River otters keep fishing through the cold and are most active from dawn to mid-morning and again in the evening. They may cross several miles of land to reach another stream, and they slide on paths of mud, snow or ice; a smooth, polished chute down a creek bank is a sure sign of them.

• Reading tracks without snow

  After rain or a high tide · Muddy creek banks, beach sand above the tide line, farm lanes

  Snow seldom lasts here, so look in mud and sand instead. A fox walks in a neat, almost straight line of oval prints, a raccoon leaves marks like small hands, and deer leave split hearts. Draw one track a week with its date and place.

Which trees and shrubs keep their color in a Delaware December?

• Atlantic white cedar

  Evergreen all year · Swamps and wet woods of the Sussex coastal plain

  A narrow, spire-shaped conifer with flat sprays of tiny scale-like leaves, green to bluish-green, and small round cones that start bluish. The Chesapeake Bay Program says it forms dense stands in low, wet ground and grows in only a narrow strip of the coastal plain, Delaware included. Deer and songbirds feed on it, and a cedar stand is noticeably quieter and darker than the bare woods around it.

• Sweetbay magnolia

  Leaves hang on, half evergreen · Swamp edges and stream banks

  Look for a small tree whose oval leaves are shiny on top and chalky white underneath; in winter many stay on, some turning brown. Crush one and it smells spicy. Colonists called magnolias beaver trees, because they baited beaver traps with the fragrant roots.

• Winterberry

  Berries from fall through late winter · Wet thickets, pond margins and native gardens

  A deciduous holly: the leaves fall, and the bare gray twigs stay crowded with bright red berries, which is how most people first notice it. Only female shrubs bear fruit, and 48 species of birds, along with small mammals and deer, eat the berries through the winter. Check a laden bush on a cold morning to see who is feeding.

• Christmas trees and wreaths from the land

  December 4 to 6; workshops through December 12 · Coverdale Farm Preserve, Greenville; Abbott’s Mill Nature Center, Milford

  The Delaware Nature Society’s Celebrate the Season weekend at Coverdale (December 4–6, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.) sells Christmas trees beside a winter market, and Coverdale’s Winter Wreath Workshop on Saturday, December 12, 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. ($18, ages 8 and up), begins with a walk to gather greenery. Abbott’s Mill makes holly wreaths on December 5.

When is the earliest sunset in Delaware, and how short is the shortest day?

Does it snow in Delaware in December, and what could El Niño bring?

What is in the night sky over Delaware in December 2026?

• The Geminids

  Night of Sunday, December 13, into Monday, December 14 · Anywhere dark; face whichever part of the sky is darkest

  The richest shower of the year. The International Meteor Organization gives a peak rate near 150 an hour, a theoretical figure that assumes the radiant straight overhead and a flawless sky; from a real backyard or beach you will see fewer, but more than in any other shower. In 2026 a slender crescent goes down by mid-evening and leaves the productive hours after midnight dark; the IMO calls it a moon-free maximum. Geminids appear from mid-evening, unlike most showers, and rates climb toward about 2 a.m., when Gemini stands highest.

• The Cold Moon

  Evening of Wednesday, December 23; nearly as full on Christmas Eve · Rising in the northeast around sunset

  Full at 8:28 p.m. EST and only about seven hours from perigee, the Moon’s nearest point in its orbit, the Moon will never be nearer at full this year, and it rises looking its largest of 2026. It comes up in the late afternoon dusk of the 23rd over the Delaware Bay and the Atlantic, a good reason to be on the beach at Cape Henlopen or Fenwick Island at moonrise. Two evenings earlier, on the solstice, the waxing gibbous Moon passes close to the Pleiades, though its glare will swamp the fainter stars.

• The solstice

  Monday, December 21, 3:50 p.m. EST · Watch where the sun sets

  This is the moment the sun stands farthest south for the year. Note where it sets behind a landmark this week, then look again in March; the swing along the horizon is bigger than most people expect.

• Venus and the morning planets

  All month before dawn · Southeast before sunrise

  Venus is the brilliant morning star, unmistakable in the southeast, and it keeps rising higher each morning until its widest separation from the Sun, on January 3. Before sunrise on Friday, December 4, and again on Saturday, December 5, a slim waning Moon hangs close by, Spica glinting between the two. Jupiter, in Leo, rises by mid-evening late in the month and stands high in the south by morning twilight; Mars, orange and gaining brightness, keeps it company.

• Saturn at dusk, and two weaker showers

  Saturn all month; Ursids December 22; Quadrantids January 3–4 · Saturn in the south and southwest after dark

  After dark, steady yellowish Saturn has the evening sky to itself; by late December it is gone below the western horizon around four hours after sunset. The Ursids, peaking December 22, are drowned by a nearly full Moon. The Quadrantids fare better: the IMO puts their brief peak at 10:25 p.m. EST on January 3, just before new moon.

What can families do outdoors in Delaware in December 2026?

Safety notes for December in Delaware