What to look for in nature in Hawaii this November

In the first weeks of November. The mōlī, or Laysan albatross, spends its summers feeding far out in the North Pacific, as far as the waters off Alaska, and touches land only to breed. The Friends of Kauaʻi Wildlife Refuges give early November as arrival time and late July as the moment the last chick leaves. DLNR’s species account says eggs are laid in November and December and the chicks fledge in July; each pair raises a single chick, and a young bird stays at sea for about three years before it comes back to land. Most of the world’s mōlī nest in Hawaiian waters, the great majority on Midway and the other northwestern atolls, but colonies on Kauaʻi, Oʻahu and Lehua, off Niʻihau, let people in the main islands watch the whole cycle, and DLNR says the species is slowly moving back into places it had abandoned.

November is the month of the dance. Pairs bow to each other, rattle and clack their bills, and stretch their necks to point straight up while calling, a display that young birds practice for years before they choose a mate.

The worst threats are far from shore: longline hooks and floating plastic that parents feed to their chicks. At the colonies, keeping out predators matters most; in 2006, mongooses, cats and dogs killed 15 percent of the shearwater chicks at Kaʻena Point.

Because November is when the ʻuaʻu kani, the wedge-tailed shearwater, leaves home. DLNR’s species page says the colonies nest in step: most eggs go down in June and most young fly in November. They make that first flight at night, and on Oʻahu’s brightly lit east and south coasts many are pulled off course by streetlights, ballfields and buildings. They circle until exhausted, land, and cannot take off again from flat pavement. DLNR’s fallout season runs from about September 15 to December 15, but on Oʻahu the ʻuaʻu kani is the bird of its second half. The Hawaiʻi Wildlife Center expects their numbers to peak in the middle and late part of November, and says its Oʻahu program cared for 645 of them in 2024, releasing 95 percent.

A study of road-killed shearwaters on Kalanianaʻole Highway, along Oʻahu’s southeast shore, between 2012 and 2019 found that fallout ran from November into December and was worst on nights with little moonlight and strong winds. The moon is new on November 8 this year and sets in the early evening for several nights after, so the stretch from about November 8 to 15 is one to watch.

Officially, now. The Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary gives the usual span of the season as November through April, with the most whales from January through March. A handful usually turns up earlier; in 2025 the Pacific Whale Foundation reported whales off Maui on September 21, and a Kauaʻi charter crew logged its first of the season on October 14. November whales are the vanguard. Numbers build through December, and calves born here are a feature of the peak months that follow.

About half of all North Pacific humpbacks spend the winter here, mating, giving birth and nursing in water shallower than about 600 feet, especially in the channels of Maui Nui and over Penguin Bank.

At the coastal wetlands, which fill with visitors from Alaska and beyond in November. Keālia Pond National Wildlife Refuge on Maui says shorebirds start arriving in August and waterfowl build through September and October, and that more than 30 species of waterfowl, shorebirds and migrant ducks show up in winter, a few of them from Asia. They share the ponds with four endangered native waterbirds: the aeʻo, or Hawaiian stilt; the ʻalae keʻokeʻo, or Hawaiian coot; the ʻalae ʻula, or Hawaiian gallinule; and the koloa maoli, the Hawaiian duck.

Project FeederWatch, a winter tally organized by the Cornell Lab with Birds Canada, starts on November 1 and runs through April. You count from one spot, with or without a feeder, as often as you like; the U.S. fee is $18.

November is the height of the nēnē nesting season. DLNR says the state bird can nest in any month but May, June and July, that most pairs breed between October and March, and that the bulk of clutches go down between October and December. A female lays two to five eggs, which hatch in about 30 days, and the goslings can walk and feed themselves soon after hatching, though they stay with their parents for up to a year. So the first families with goslings can turn up from late in the year, on Hawaiʻi Island, Maui, Kauaʻi and Molokaʻi.

Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park says perhaps 25,000 nēnē lived in the islands in 1778 and only about 50 by the 1940s. The recovery since then is real but fragile, and cars remain the leading cause of death for adults in the park.

With the stars. The Makahiki, the Hawaiian new year, was a season of peace, harvest thanks, games and feasting. Kamehameha Schools explains that it began when Makaliʻi, the star cluster known elsewhere as the Pleiades, rose in the east just as the sun went down in the west, and that the season runs from mid-November to late January or February. Accounts differ on exactly which moon after that rising opened the season.

You can watch the sign for yourself. Makaliʻi is a small, tight dipper-shaped knot of six or seven stars, low in the east-northeast after dark. Early in the month it climbs into view a while after sunset; by mid-November it rises at about sunset, and in the last days of November it stands well clear of the horizon at dusk. On the night of November 23 to 24, the full moon passes almost on top of it.

November opens Hoʻoilo, the wet half of the Hawaiian year, and in the long-term averages it shows. Honolulu’s normal November rainfall is 2.25 inches, up from 1.51 in October. In Hilo, November is the wettest month of the whole year, with 14.39 inches on average and about 17 days bringing at least a tenth of an inch. The leeward Kona coast is the exception, and stays dry. The Western Regional Climate Center says a winter usually brings one or two Kona storms, bringing widespread heavy rain and often strong winds for hours or days, though some winters have none and others four or five. In some winters as many as six or eight cold fronts sweep over two or more islands, with downpours and gusty northerly winds. Major storms can drop a foot or more of snow on the upper slopes of Haleakalā, Maunakea and Mauna Loa several times a year, almost always between October and May.

This year the outlook leans the other way. Federal forecasters rated an El Niño of the very strongest class better than a nine-in-ten bet for this cool season on September 10, and of a historic one by October to December at three in four. Its September 17 outlook for the islands tilts all four main airports toward a dry winter: a 70 percent lean to below-normal rain from November to January, and 75 percent for December to February and January to March. NOAA’s Climate.gov notes that El Niño favors a dry rainy season in the islands, especially in January and February, with Honolulu running about three inches short, and weaker trade winds that sometimes turn westerly.

CPC grounds that lean in its computer models and in the way past strong El Niño winters have tended to go dry in the islands, and it keeps the dry tilt going through March to May. The timing matters. The Weather Service’s Pacific ENSO Applications Climate Center notes that rain tends to run above average for most of an El Niño year, then turns dry toward its end, with the worst of it in the first half of the year after. That fits 2026 so far: CPC counted Honolulu’s airport at 230 percent of its average rain from January through August, and Kahului at 288 percent. A wet start, in other words, says little about February. The CPC adds that El Niño tends to bring cooler than average temperatures to the northwestern islands as the winter goes on.

The next set of NOAA outlooks, due October 15, goes up on the CPC’s 90-day outlook page. The central Pacific hurricane season ends on November 30. For the barometer and wind at your own place during a Kona low, open the live weather readout.

Between 22 and 25 minutes, less than a minute a day. Sunsets stop getting earlier in late November. In Honolulu the earliest sunset of the whole year comes on November 26 at 5:48 p.m., and the clock time barely moves from about November 21 to December 1; from then on the evenings slowly lengthen again, while the mornings go on getting darker into January, so the day as a whole still shrinks until the solstice. On the mainland, clocks fall back on November 1, but Hawaii does not use daylight time, so the islands simply end up two hours behind the West Coast instead of three.

For first light and last light at your own beach or ridge, set a pin on the daylight calculator.

All times are Hawaii Standard Time. The islands do not change their clocks, so nothing shifts here on November 1.

Planning a summit night? Our cloud forecast shows whether the trade-wind cloud deck will sit below the mountain, and the moon calendar gives moonrise for your island.

A native tree, if you can. Hawaii observes Arbor Day on the first Friday of November, which in 2026 is November 6, and DLNR’s Kaulunani urban forestry program chose the date because the rainy season has just begun and young roots have months of wet weather ahead. Tree giveaways usually fall on the Saturday after; last year’s offered natives such as ʻōhiʻa lehua, wiliwili, ʻaʻaliʻi, pōhinahina and hōawa. Kaulunani had not yet listed the 2026 giveaways at the start of October.

1. Walk to the albatross. The Kaʻena Point trail is long and exposed, so go in the cool of early morning, bring lots of water and a hat, and leave the dog at home. Count how many birds are sitting and how many are dancing.
2. Help the rainforest grow back. Volunteer mornings pulling invasive plants at Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park (Stewardship at the Summit) start at 8:45 a.m. on Saturday, November 7 and run about three hours (the park has also listed November 21 and 28; check its calendar); gloves and tools are provided, wear long pants and sturdy shoes, and anyone under 18 needs a parent or guardian.
3. Look for honeycreepers. A free Forest Bird Hike leaves the Hosmer Grove picnic shelter in Haleakalā National Park at 9 a.m. on November 10, with more listed for November 17, 18, 24 and 25; confirm on the park’s calendar.
4. Use the free day. Veterans Day, Wednesday, November 11, is a fee-free day at the national parks, now for U.S. citizens and residents only. The same day brings Waimea Valley’s Makahiki Festival.
5. See a fishpond being mended. At Kaloko-Honokōhau National Historical Park on the Kona coast, a stone-setter demonstrates traditional Hawaiian wall building at Kaloko Fishpond on the third Wednesday of each month, November 18, 10 to 11 a.m.
6. Plant a tree on Arbor Day weekend (Waimea Valley’s giveaway is Saturday, November 7), and take a photo of it on the first of every month.
7. Join a count. Report a kōlea arrival before November 30, sign up for a Little Count of your yard from December 1, or start Project FeederWatch.
8. Watch for Taurid fireballs around November 5 and 12, in the late evening.

The Naturalist’s Field Journal has room for all of this, and the full set of seasonal nature guides covers other months and states.

• Kauaʻi is still largely closed. After Hurricane Lowell and then Nolo, DLNR’s September 30 update kept nearly all forestry and wildlife lands and trails on the island closed, with a few exceptions such as Mana Plains, Keāhua Arboretum and the bottom of Waimea Canyon; Kōkeʻe Road was shut for cleanup and utility work in late September, and Kīlauea Point National Wildlife Refuge remains closed. Check DLNR’s and the refuge’s pages before any Kauaʻi outing.
• Kona storms and flash floods. Heavy rain on steep, small watersheds turns streams into torrents in minutes. Never cross a rising stream, and stay out of the water near stream mouths after heavy rain, when the state may post brown-water advisories. Avoid swimming in fresh water with cuts because of leptospirosis.
• Winter surf. North and west shores can go from flat to dangerous overnight. Swim at guarded beaches, ask the lifeguard about currents, and stay well back from the shorebreak and wet rocks when the surf is up. The Waikīkī Aquarium posts the expected box jellyfish days, which follow the moon’s monthly cycle.
• Summits in winter. Winter storms can coat the upper slopes of Maunakea, Mauna Loa and Haleakalā in snow, and the summits can be below freezing before dawn. Check the Maunakea Weather Center’s road report, take warm layers and gloves, and go slowly at altitude.
• Kīlauea. On October 1 the USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory kept the volcano at alert level WATCH, with glow and spatter at the summit vents, a fresh shallow intrusion, and another fountaining episode possible. Check the daily update before visiting, and stay out of vog if you have breathing or heart problems.
• Earlier dark. By late November the sun is down by about 5:40 p.m. in Hilo and 5:53 p.m. in Līhuʻe. Start long hikes early and carry a light.
• Hunting and blaze orange. The fall game bird season opens on the first Saturday in November and runs through the last Sunday in January under the state’s rules, which this year is November 7, 2026 to January 31, 2027, on weekends, state holidays and, in some units, extra weekdays. DLNR’s 2026–27 announcement with unit-by-unit details had not been posted at the start of October; last year’s came out in October. On Kauaʻi, DLNR’s 2026 deer announcement has archery hunting daily in Unit F and on weekends and holidays in Units J and K through December 31, where storm closures allow, and pigs and goats are open year-round in many units statewide. Wherever firearms are permitted, state rules put everyone in the party, hunters, guides, helpers and companions, in a factory-made blaze-orange outer garment (a solid shirt, vest, jacket or coat, or mesh with holes of one-eighth inch at most) that shows from the front and the back. Camouflage orange is not allowed. Hikers sharing hunting areas should wear something bright too.