What to look for in nature in Louisiana this January

Mostly now. LDWF’s fact sheet says Louisiana’s bald eagles nest in winter and early spring and gives an incubation period of about 35 days, so a clutch laid in December hatches in January. A pair usually has up to three eggs. The adults take turns at the nest, and from hatching on the rhythm changes: instead of a white head sitting low and motionless, you see an adult standing on the rim, bending down to tear fish or coot into slivers for the downy young.

The same fact sheet notes that the young leave the nest 72 to 78 days after hatching, which puts first flights from January nests in late March and April. Most of the state’s nests are in the southeastern coastal parishes, typically in the crowns of cypress trees beside open lakes, where the birds hunt fish and also take ducks, coots and nutria. Nests in the north and center of the state are fewer and, the department says, less successful.

To watch without disturbing them, stay far back (a car or a distant levee makes a good blind) and leave if an adult starts calling or flies off. LDWF also lists midwinter surveys of eagles that are not nesting, and the fact sheet notes that a young eagle needs four to five years to grow its white head and tail. Until then it is dark brown, often blotched with white, so not every big dark bird on a cypress snag is a vulture. The Kisatchie National Forest’s eagle cameras, described in our November guide, let you follow a nest from home.

January is the month of the midwinter count. LDWF flies its coastal aerial survey from September through January along 27 north–south lines from the Gulf to U.S. Highway 90, at 125 feet and about 100 miles an hour, and in early January it also joins the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s mid-winter waterfowl inventory, a coordinated count across the flyway. The January 2023 survey estimated close to 2 million ducks on the coast and Little River Basin, the old Catahoula Lake survey area, plus another 193,000 in the northeast Delta parishes. Numbers swing hard from year to year: the January 2024 report, the newest January report we could retrieve from LDWF’s site, put the same area at 1.47 million, the lowest January estimate on record and about half the long-term January average of 2.96 million, after a summer of poor marsh plant growth and low water had cut how many birds the southwest marshes could feed.

A few patterns from the January 2023 report, the more typical year, are worth knowing before you go out. About six in ten of the coastal ducks were in the southwest, where green-winged teal and gadwall were the commonest, and the biologists noted that big flocks of ducks and geese sat on harvested rice fields left undisturbed. Southeast Louisiana had more canvasbacks than any other duck, and more than half its total was at the mouth of the Mississippi. On Catahoula, in central Louisiana, rafts of canvasbacks totaling 85,000 were almost the only ducks on the lake. A separate count found scaup rafting on Lake Borgne and Lake Pontchartrain, where the department surveys them each December and January because the lakes are a continentally important wintering site.

Good places to look without a boat include Cameron Prairie and Lacassine national wildlife refuges in the southwest, both managed for wintering ducks and geese, and Catahoula National Wildlife Refuge in central Louisiana. Check each refuge’s visitor page for which roads, levees and trails are open in hunting season, which closes earlier in the west than the east this year (see the safety notes). LDWF posts each month’s survey report on its aerial waterfowl survey page.

Earlier than almost anywhere else. Purple martins spend the winter in South America, and the first ones back in the United States usually land along the Gulf Coast. The Purple Martin Conservation Association calls these first arrivals scouts, and its timing guide explains that they tend to be adult birds returning to the same colony sites they used the year before. Last year’s young follow later, from 4 to 12 weeks after the first adults.

In 2023 the association announced the country’s first sighting of the year from New Orleans on January 7, reported by a martin landlord. First dates shift from year to year and from town to town, and the association’s live map is the best guide to when they reach your parish. Because the scouts are adults, the males among them are already glossy blue-black all over, easy to tell from the duller females that follow.

If you host martins, clean and ready the housing before the scouts arrive, and report your first bird to the association’s Scout-Arrival Study, a community science map that shows the spring wave moving north through the season. If you don’t, look for the white gourd racks that stand beside ponds and in yards across the south of the state, and watch them on a sunny afternoon.

Because it is courtship and nesting season for the two big owls of Louisiana’s woods and swamps. Long, still winter nights carry their voices a surprising distance, and the leafless canopy makes them easier to spot at dusk.

Keep owl watching respectful. Don’t play recordings near a nest, and keep flashlight beams off the birds; a quiet wait at the edge of the woods at sunset is usually enough.

January is the deep middle of winter here, but it is never fully dormant. Watch for these first flowers and swelling buds, especially in the south of the state and after a run of mild days.

Most dramatically, and most recently, in 2025, in a storm that rewrote the record books. On January 20 and 21, 2025, a low pressure system crossing the Gulf ran into an Arctic air mass. Snow began on the Monday evening and turned heavy by Tuesday morning, with winds of 20 to 25 miles an hour gusting to 30 or 40 and visibility down to a quarter mile or less. The National Weather Service in Lake Charles issued the first blizzard warning in that office’s history. Totals ranged from an inch or two in central Louisiana to more than a foot in spots across Acadiana.

NOAA’s account of the storm records that New Orleans had its snowiest day since its records began in 1948, Baton Rouge its snowiest since 1892, and Thibodaux its snowiest since 1893. Then the skies cleared over the fresh snow and the temperature plunged. On the morning of January 22, New Iberia fell to 2 °F and Lafayette to 4 °F, both all-time record lows, and Baton Rouge reached 7 °F, its coldest since records there began in 1930. Temperatures stayed below freezing for 36 to 40 hours across much of the Lake Charles forecast area.

A storm like that is not something to plan around, and most Januarys bring none at all to the south of the state. It is a reminder, though, to take every hard freeze warning seriously. If the forecast ever turns white again, keep a notebook handy: the tracks of raccoons, rabbits and wading birds pressed into Louisiana snow are a rare thing to record.

In NOAA’s 1991–2020 normals, all seven of the state’s main airport stations run a little colder in January than in December or February. Average highs run from 57 °F at Monroe and 58 °F at Shreveport to about 62 or 63 °F from Lafayette and Baton Rouge to Lake Charles and New Orleans. Average lows tell the bigger story: about 37 °F in Monroe and Shreveport, 39 °F in Alexandria, 42 °F in Baton Rouge and 46 °F at New Orleans International Airport. Monroe and Shreveport average 10 to 11 nights at freezing or below in January, Alexandria about 10, Baton Rouge 7, Lafayette 5, Lake Charles between 4 and 5, and New Orleans International Airport about 3. It is a wet month too, with normal rain from about 4.4 inches at Shreveport to 6.4 inches at Baton Rouge.

This winter has an unusual push behind it. Odds that the warm Pacific event will crest at the very strong level by midwinter topped nine in ten in the federal ENSO outlook issued September 10. NOAA’s Climate.gov summary of a century of El Niño winters calls a wetter-than-average October-to-March along the Gulf Coast the most reliable U.S. signal of all, seen in more than 80 percent of events, and says that in strong events the Gulf Coast and Southeast have been consistently wet. The National Weather Service in Jackson, which covers northeast Louisiana, sums up the pattern for the Deep South as wetter and cooler in winter and spring.

NOAA’s official outlook for the season is due October 15 and is refreshed every month after that; you can see the newest version on the federal 90-day outlook maps.

For the chance of frost on any given night in your town, the Louisiana freeze dates page gives typical freeze dates for stations around the state, and the local forecast page shows what is coming this week.

The days are lengthening again, slowly at first and then faster. Evenings started stretching back in early December, while sunrises keep getting later until roughly January 4 to 6 in Louisiana, so early in the month the extra light arrives only in the evening. By the end of the month mornings are brightening too, and each day adds noticeably more light than at the start. The table shows how much light each city adds over the month.

Saturday evening, January 2, brings perihelion, Earth’s yearly closest pass by the sun, proof enough that Louisiana’s winter comes from Earth’s tilt rather than distance. For sunrise, sunset and twilight times in your own parish, try the daylight calculator.

Moonless evenings, best for the Milky Way and faint stars, run from about the 3rd through the 12th. Before a night out, check the cloud forecast, and the moon phase calendar for the hour the moon clears your treeline.

• First Day Hikes, Friday, January 1, 2027. Louisiana State Parks joins the national New Year’s Day hiking tradition; for 2026 it listed 35 state parks and historic sites, from Lake Bistineau to Grand Isle, hosting hikes on January 1 and 2. No 2027 lineup was online in early October; watch lastateparks.com as the holidays approach.
• A Christmas Bird Count before January 5. If a circle near you still has its count ahead, the compiler will usually welcome a beginner or a feeder watcher.
• Bird walk in Baton Rouge, early January. Baton Rouge Audubon Society guides a monthly walk at BREC’s Bluebonnet Swamp, normally held on a month’s opening Saturday from 7 a.m. in the parking lot, with a $3 park admission fee and no registration. The January 2027 walk was not yet listed when we checked, so confirm the date with the society, especially with New Year’s weekend in play.
• Programs at Big Branch Marsh. The refuge headquarters in Lacombe runs Nature Explorers, a free program of play and learning for kids aged 6 and under, on the first and third Fridays of the month, and Homeschool Fridays for kindergarten through eighth grade on the fourth Friday. The refuge had not posted January 2027 dates when we checked, and the holiday may shift the first session, so check its events page before going.
• Barataria Preserve. The national park unit south of New Orleans lists its ranger-led walks and talks on the park calendar, and January’s were not yet posted when we checked; the boardwalk trails are a good place to listen for barred owls and see wintering ducks and wading birds on a mild afternoon.
• Community science at home. Keep Project FeederWatch counts going through the winter, add your sightings to eBird, and if you host purple martins, report your first scout to the Scout-Arrival Study. Looking ahead, the Great Backyard Bird Count normally falls in the middle of February, and its 2027 dates will appear at birdcount.org.

We checked these against each organizer’s page on October 2, 2026; programs change, and many cancel in freezing rain, so call or check online first. You can browse other states and months through our nature calendar, and a bayou walk or refuge morning slips neatly onto one sheet in the Naturalist’s Field Journal.

• Deer seasons in January. LDWF’s 2026–27 schedule changes week to week this month. Hunting with or without dogs ends January 3 in Areas 1, 3, 4, 7 and 8, and January 17 in Area 2, and still-hunting in Area 10 also ends January 3; Areas 1 and 4 then reopen to still-hunting January 4–24. Area 6 stays open to either sex through January 24, as do Areas 5 and 9 for bucks only. Primitive firearms seasons follow: January 4–10 in Areas 3, 7, 8 and 10, January 18–24 in Area 2, and January 25–31 in the remaining five areas (1, 4 and 6, plus 5 and 9 for bucks only). Archery runs to January 15 in Areas 3, 7, 8 and 10, to January 31 in Areas 1, 2 and 4, and to February 15 in Areas 5, 6 and 9. State WMAs and the Kisatchie National Forest keep separate calendars, so read those before a walk on public land.
• Birds and small game. Duck season ends January 24 in the West Zone, with a youth and veterans day on January 30, and January 31 in the East Zone. Goose seasons run to February 7, woodcock to January 31, and doves to January 10 in the South Zone and January 17 in the North Zone. Snipe close January 10 and reopen January 25. Quail, rabbit and squirrel seasons continue to February 28, and the furbearer trapping season runs from November 20 to March 31.
• Hunter Orange or Blaze Pink. Through every open gun season for deer, LDWF requires anyone carrying buckshot, slugs, a centerfire rifle or pistol, or a muzzleloader-type primitive gun, whatever the quarry, to wear a combined 400 square inches of the two approved colors on head, chest or back. Hunters on privately owned property may substitute a hat in either color, and a deer hunter on private land may go without once up in a raised stand. WMA rules go further: during open firearms deer seasons, every hunter and trapper there, waterfowl and dove hunters excepted, wears both the full 400 square inches and a hat in one of the two colors. Hikers and birders aren’t required to wear it, but on public land this month a bright hat is sensible.
• Hard freezes. January is the month for them. When the forecast drops into the 20s, let faucets drip, move pets and potted plants indoors, and expect bridges and overpasses to ice before other roads. The 2025 storm showed how fast roads can close.
• Cold water. Lakes and bayous are at their coldest. A capsized canoe in January water can bring on cold shock and then hypothermia within minutes; wear a life jacket and paddle with a partner.
• Fog and short days. Dense fog is common on calm winter mornings near the Atchafalaya, the coast and the big lakes. Sunset still comes early, so carry a light on afternoon walks.