What to look for in nature in Illinois this December

When does winter start in Illinois, and how much snow falls in December?

When do the sandhill cranes leave for the South?

• The last big count

  Late November to the first week of December · Jasper-Pulaski Fish and Wildlife Area, near Medaryville, Indiana, about two hours southeast of the Loop

  Last season the weekly count jumped to 16,400 on December 2, its high for the fall. A week later, on December 9, the counters found 115; the cold had sent nearly every bird on toward Tennessee and Florida. The site's record, 32,938, came on November 28, 2023. If you have been meaning to see the spectacle, the first weekend of December is the safest bet, and a sudden hard freeze is the signal that the end is near.

• Crane Saturdays end December 19

  Saturdays, 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. Central, through December 19, 2026 · The observation tower at Jasper-Pulaski

  International Crane Foundation staff are on the platform on the last three Saturdays of the season, December 5, 12 and 19, to explain what you are seeing. Indiana DNR advises arriving at least an hour before sunset, when flocks begin to glide in from the fields on every side to roost in the marsh, calling the whole way. Dress for standing still in the wind.

• Southbound flocks over Illinois

  Clear days after a cold front, mostly the first half of the month · Overhead in the Chicago suburbs and the Kankakee valley; a few flocks farther west

  The departure flights pass high, often in long, wavering lines, and you will hear the rattling calls before you find the birds. Add each flock to eBird with a rough count; the reports show which way the birds went and when.

Where are the bald eagles in Illinois in December?

• Lock and dam counts

  Wednesday mornings, December through February · Locks and dams on the Mississippi and Illinois rivers, including Lock and Dam 18 near Gladstone, in Henderson County

  Rock Island District park rangers count eagles at their locks and dams at 8:30 every Wednesday morning from December through February and post the totals on the district's eagle-watching page, so you can see where birds are concentrating before you drive. The best count of the 2022–23 season came at Lock and Dam 18 on December 28, 2022, right after a cold snap: 680 adults and 130 brown juveniles. A crowded tailwater is the easiest place to compare the white-headed adults with the mottled brown young birds.

• The Illinois River and Pere Marquette

  From late December; reservations open in mid-November · Pere Marquette State Park near Grafton; Chautauqua and the Illinois River refuges near Havana; Starved Rock

  According to the Fish and Wildlife Service, the Illinois River valley draws plenty of eagles every winter. At Pere Marquette, where the Illinois meets the Mississippi, the park runs morning eagle programs with a talk at the visitor center at 8:30 a.m. followed by a drive to the roosts; the state's eagle calendar listed the first of last season's programs on December 26, with reservations opening November 15. Call the visitor center for this winter's dates. The bigger eagle festivals, in Alton, the Quad Cities, Quincy and at Starved Rock, fall in January and February.

Where can you see owls in Illinois this winter?

• Snowy owls on the lakefront

  Late November into winter, in irruption years · Montrose Point and Beach; the South Side lakefront

  Snowy owls breed on the Arctic tundra and reach Illinois in good numbers only in irruption winters, so a sighting is never guaranteed. Last year two arrived at Montrose Beach in the second half of November, early for them, and drew birders from as far as Indiana and Arizona. They look for open, treeless ground that resembles home, which is why a wide, empty beach suits them. Chicago Bird Alliance asks watchers to stay at least 300 feet away, keep quiet, skip the flash, never bait an owl, and back off if the bird keeps watching you. Only adult males are close to pure white; most snowies are barred with brown.

• Short-eared owls at dusk

  Late afternoon to dark, all winter · Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie near Wilmington, especially the southeast bison pasture; large grasslands in southern Illinois

  Short-eared owls and northern harriers, both listed as endangered in Illinois, hunt voles over the same winter grasslands, and at Midewin the Forest Service describes the two fighting in the air over a vole in the last light before sunset. A state recovery outline notes that both species are far more common here in migration and winter than in summer, sometimes in roosts of 20 or more, and that grasslands in southern Illinois and southwestern Indiana appear to be of continental importance for wintering short-eared owls. Look for a buoyant, moth-like flight low over the grass.

• Great horned owls start nesting

  Hooting now; eggs as early as January · Woodlots, river bottoms, parks and cemeteries statewide

  IDNR calls the great horned owl common and native, and one of the earliest nesting birds in the state; it takes over an old hawk, crow or squirrel nest and can be sitting on two or three white eggs in January. Its deep, soft hooting carries far on still December evenings. Stand outside for ten minutes after dark and listen.

How do I join a Christmas Bird Count in Illinois?

• What Illinois counts find

  Statewide summary from the 2022–23 season · 69 count circles

  Audubon's summary of the 123rd count in Illinois listed 1,208 field observers and 201 feeder watchers, who together found 168 species. The southern reservoirs topped the list: Rend Lake with 103 species, Crab Orchard National Wildlife Refuge with 99 and Carlyle Lake with 96. The long view is the real value. Pileated woodpeckers, found on 15 to 20 Illinois counts a year in the 1980s, now turn up on about 58, while house sparrows have fallen from roughly 200,000 counted in the 1970s to about 25,000.

• Counts around Chicago

  Dates are usually set by early November · Cook, Lake, DuPage, Will and Kane counties

  The Chicago Ornithological Society posts a Chicagoland count guide each fall. Last season's listed eleven counts, among them Lisle–Arboretum, Barrington, Joliet, Chicago South, Chicago Urban, Evanston–North Shore and Calumet–Sand Ridge, plus a Chicago Lakeshore count on Christmas Day itself. Sign-up deadlines fell between December 1 and 8, so write early.

• Downstate counts

  Through the count period · Peoria, Chautauqua, Chillicothe, Champaign County, Clinton Lake, Middle Fork, Allerton and many more

  Peoria Audubon runs three circles, one of them named for the Chautauqua refuge, and Champaign County Audubon's count, run since 1941, falls on the first Saturday of the count period. Local Audubon chapters and bird clubs announce dates in their newsletters; if none is near you, Audubon's feeder-count option lets you count from home inside a circle.

When is the earliest sunset in Illinois?

What is in the Illinois night sky in December 2026?

• The Geminids

  Active December 4 to 20; best on the night of Sunday, December 13, into Monday, December 14 · Anywhere dark, looking up rather than at the horizon; the radiant in Gemini is highest around 2 a.m.

  A peak near 150 an hour is the International Meteor Organization's figure for an ideal sky with the radiant overhead. It calls this year's maximum moon-free, since just a slender crescent shows after dusk and is down by about 9 p.m. Real counts will be lower, but it remains the year's strongest shower. Dress as if for ice fishing, lie back on a pad, and give your eyes twenty minutes.

• The Cold Moon, the closest full moon of 2026

  Full at 7:28 p.m. CST on Wednesday, December 23 · Rising in the northeast near sunset

  Full moon and perigee are just seven hours apart this time, so the Cold Moon is 2026's closest and biggest-looking full moon, a true supermoon. December 23 is the night to look, with Christmas Eve almost as round. November's Beaver Moon was a supermoon too, but only just.

• Planets

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

  Saturn is the lone evening planet, setting earlier each week. Venus is a dazzling morning star in the southeast, rising higher until early January; at dawn on the 4th a waning crescent passes Spica, and on the 5th it sits a little closer to Venus. In Leo, Jupiter is up by mid-evening at month's end and outshines everything but Venus; Mars, brightening steadily, is the reddish point not far away. Early on the evening of December 21, a gibbous moon slides up beside the Pleiades.

• The Ursids and a look ahead to the Quadrantids

  Ursids peak around December 22; Quadrantids peak on the night of January 3, 2027 · Ursids from near the Little Dipper; Quadrantids from the northeast after midnight

  The Ursids manage about ten an hour, mostly lost this year to a nearly full moon. Save your energy for the Quadrantids, whose brief peak comes around 9:25 p.m. CST on January 3 with the moon nearly new.

Which Illinois trees stay green in winter, and how do you name the bare ones?

• The white pines of the Rock River valley

  All winter; cross-country ski trails open when there is snow · White Pines Forest State Park, west of Oregon near Mount Morris, in Ogle County

  IDNR says this 385-acre park protects one of Illinois' last stands of native eastern white pine and one of the southernmost natural stands in the country. Settlers found the pines along Pine Creek, and the effort to save them led to the park in 1927. The Morton Arboretum's field marks: soft needles in bundles of five, crowded toward the branch tips, and slender cones up to 8 inches long tipped with white resin.

• Eastern red cedar and its winter berries

  Berries hang on through winter · Fencerows, old pastures, limestone bluffs and roadsides statewide

  Red cedar is a juniper, not a true cedar. The Morton Arboretum notes that its prickly, blue-green foliage often turns bronze in winter, and that female trees carry berry-like cones that ripen a powdery blue-gray and often hang on all winter, a favorite of many birds. Check a fruiting cedar for the robins that flock to winter berries, and look at the reddish-brown bark peeling in strips low on the trunk.

• Naming trees without leaves

  All winter · Any park or woodlot; classes at the Morton Arboretum in Lisle on December 4 and 12

  Start with how the twigs are arranged. Maples, ashes, dogwoods and buckeyes grow their buds in opposite pairs; almost everything else alternates. Then look at the buds, the leaf scars and the bark: the long, cigar-shaped buds of beech, the curling plates of shagbark hickory, the warty ridges of hackberry. The Arboretum's winter tree identification class teaches exactly these clues, with in-person field sessions from noon to 4 p.m. on Friday, December 4, and Saturday, December 12 (fee and registration).

How do Illinois animals get through the winter?

• Sleepers and dozers

  December to February or March · Burrows, caves, old mines and tree cavities

  Woodchucks dig a single-entrance winter burrow, often under tree roots in the woods, and Illinois Extension says one may stay below for as long as four months before coming up in February. Chipmunks and raccoons are not true hibernators: the Forest Preserve District of DuPage County notes they sink into torpor for days at a stretch, then wake to eat and relieve themselves. Skunks and raccoons den up through the coldest spells and live off their fat. Even true hibernators rouse now and then, more often as spring nears.

• The ones you can see

  All month, especially at dawn and dusk · Field edges, woodlots, suburban yards

  Wildlife Illinois says deer, turkeys and coyotes tend to group up in winter and grow bolder as food runs short, and that rabbits and voles turn to the bark of young trees and shrubs once other food is gone. Coyotes wear a thick winter coat that makes them look bigger than they are, and their barks and howls carry farthest on cold, still nights; breeding peaks in late February or early March. Robins that stay for the winter flock up and switch from worms to berries.

• Reading tracks after a snow

  The morning after a fresh, light snowfall · Fence lines, stream banks, the edge of any woods

  An inch of new snow turns a field into a guest book. Foxes and coyotes leave a neat, nearly straight line of prints; a cottontail bounds, so its long back feet print in front of its little forefeet. Follow a trail backward rather than forward, so you never push the animal that made it.

What can Illinois families do outdoors in December?

Safety notes for December in Illinois