What to look for in nature in Maine this December

How do you tell Maine’s evergreens apart in winter?

• Balsam fir, and the wreath harvest

  Tipping from November into mid-December · Statewide, in damp woods, thickets and well-drained hillsides

  Balsam fir is the most common tree in Maine. Look for smooth gray bark on young trees dotted with blisters of sticky resin, and needles about an inch long, dark and glossy on top with two white lines underneath. Its cones stand upright and fall apart on the branch, leaving bare spikes behind. The University of Maine Cooperative Extension explains that wreath brush, called tips, can be cut only once the needles have “set” for the winter: the Maine Christmas Tree Association’s standard is after November 1 and after at least three nights in a row at 20 °F or colder. Tips of 12 to 20 inches are snapped from the branches, and the season usually runs until mid-December, leaving time to make and ship wreaths. Millions are made in Maine each year. If you see tippers along a woods road, know that they need written permission from the landowner.

• Red spruce

  All winter · Rocky uplands statewide, especially north-facing mountain slopes

  Red spruce is the signature tree of the Acadian forest of northern New England and the Maritimes. Its shiny needles are about half an inch long, stiff and prickly, and its bark breaks into thin reddish-brown scales. The hanging cones start dropping in autumn or early winter, so look for them on the snow.

• Eastern hemlock

  All winter · Cool, moist slopes and ravines in nearly every part of the state

  Hemlock needles are flat, blunt and short, roughly half an inch, whitish beneath, set in a flat spray along the twig, and the tree’s top shoot droops. Its small cones hang on all winter, dropping winged seeds onto the snow. Nick the bark and the inner layer shows a purplish tint.

• Northern white cedar

  All winter · Swamps, stream banks and old pastures, most common in the north and east

  Cedar has tiny, blunt, scale-like leaves pressed flat along the twigs, and stringy bark tinged with orange. The Forest Service handbook calls its foliage a major winter food for deer, which is why cedar swamps so often double as deer wintering yards.

When is the Christmas Bird Count in Maine in 2026?

• Finding your circle

  Sign up in late November or early December · maineaudubon.org/cbc and Audubon’s national map

  Maine Audubon keeps a table of the state’s counts with dates and coordinators, filled in as each circle schedules its day; Audubon’s online map shows which circles still want help. Beginners are usually paired with experienced birders, and feeder watchers living within a circle’s boundary can often report their yard birds. York County Audubon runs two circles: its York County count, traditionally on the first Monday of the count period, and the Biddeford and Kennebunkport count later in the month. Check the published date before planning around it.

• Long-running Maine counts

  Every December since the 1970s or earlier · Farmington, Biddeford and Kennebunkport, Portland, Mount Desert Island and more

  The Farmington circle held its 50th count on December 14, 2025: 19 volunteers spent about 45 hours and found 41 species, close to the long-term average, including 52 snow buntings and a northern shrike. The Biddeford and Kennebunkport circle ran for the 66th time and found 42 species, five bald eagles among them. Coastal circles usually top the list; in the 2022–23 season Portland logged 103 species to Bangor’s 59.

• What the counts are showing

  Results each winter · Greater Portland and statewide

  Counts catch changes no single birder would notice. Maine Audubon’s staff naturalist reported in December 2025 that the Greater Portland count found 1,320 herring gulls in 2023, 1,055 in 2024 and 784 in 2025, while great black-backed gulls fell from 178 to 40. He tied the drop to avian influenza, present in Maine since 2022, so count the gulls carefully.

Why are owls hooting in Maine in December, and where are the eagles?

• Great horned owls

  Hooting most from fall into winter; pairs settle from mid-January · Woodlots next to fields, farms and suburbs statewide

  IFW calls the great horned owl Maine’s earliest-nesting bird. Males hoot in every season, but most in fall and winter, when they are advertising and defending a territory, and Audubon describes pairs calling back and forth through the nights of December. In Maine, pairs form from mid-January to mid-March, depending on how far north they are, and the female sits on her eggs for 28 to 35 days, sometimes under a coat of snow. Nesting this early gives the young a whole summer and fall to learn to hunt before their first winter. Listen on a calm evening just after dark for a deep, rhythmic series of four or five hoots; a pair answering each other often differ in pitch.

• Barred owls

  All year, more vocal on still winter nights · Mixed and wet woods, river bottoms and swamps

  The barred owl is a bit smaller, and IFW notes it is the only Maine owl with dark brown eyes, no ear tufts and a thick-necked look. Its rhythmic “who cooks for you” carries a long way across a frozen beaver pond.

• Bald eagles

  All winter · Open water: tidal rivers, river mouths, dam tailraces and the coast

  Maine’s eagle comeback is one of the state’s best conservation stories. In 1967 IFW found only 21 nesting pairs, which raised just four young; its last full aerial survey, in 2018, counted 733 pairs. IFW says many of these eagles stay in Maine for the winter rather than leaving. As lakes and rivers freeze, fishing gets harder, and scavenging on carcasses becomes a bigger part of their diet. The places to look in December are wherever the water stays open, and along the coast, where the birds perch on high trees above tidal flats.

How do Maine’s animals get through the winter?

• Snowshoe hares turning white

  The color change runs from October into December · Dense softwoods statewide, from coastal spruce to the North Woods

  IFW’s species assessment says a snowshoe hare needs 70 to 90 days to turn from brown to white, from October into December. The winter coat is about 30 percent warmer than the summer one. In a December with little snow, a white hare on brown leaves stands out; once snow comes, its huge hind feet keep it on top. Look at dusk along thick young fir and spruce.

• Wood frogs, frozen solid

  Through the winter · Under leaf litter, moss and rotting logs on the forest floor, statewide

  Wood frogs spend the winter just under the leaves, not in mud or water. IFW says they can freeze solid for days at a time, protected by glucose, a natural antifreeze, that they pack into their tissues. Their hearts stop until a thaw. The same frogs will be quacking in vernal pools by April.

• The true hibernators

  Late fall until spring · Burrows, caves, mines and old buildings

  IFW counts only three Maine mammals as true hibernators: bats, woodchucks and meadow jumping mice. A woodchuck’s body temperature falls by more than half for about five months, its heart beating just a few times a minute. Bears, raccoons and skunks enter torpor, a lighter sleep they can wake from on mild days.

• Black-capped chickadees

  All winter · Every woodlot and backyard

  Maine’s state bird is just over five inches long and weighs less than five pennies, yet it stays all winter. Maine Audubon credits its memory: the brain’s memory center grows in the fall, and a chickadee can recall where it hid a seed, and how good it was, for up to 28 days. Insects and spiders still make up as much as half of its winter food.

What tracks can you find in the snow in Maine?

• Canada lynx

  All winter, best in fresh snow · Young spruce-fir forest in Aroostook and Piscataquis counties, the western mountains and northern Washington County

  IFW estimates that more than 1,000 adult lynx live in the spruce and fir flats of northern and western Maine, and track surveys from 2015 to 2019 found them in 51 townships. Their feet are oversized and furred like snowshoes, leaving round prints more than 3 inches wide that barely sink in, while a bobcat’s are smaller and punch deeper. Lynx depend on snowshoe hares, which make up more than 75 percent of their diet when hares are plentiful, about one or two a day. The species is federally threatened. A lynx also has ear tufts longer than an inch and a tail tip that is black all the way around, both good clues if you see the animal itself.

• Snowshoe hare

  All winter · Thick softwood cover

  A hare’s tracks come in groups of four, and the two large hind prints sit in front of the two small front prints, because the hind feet swing past them at every bound. Well-used hare runways become packed trails through the firs, and lynx and fox tracks often follow them.

What can you do in Acadia National Park in winter?

• Skiing and snowshoeing the carriage roads

  Whenever snow allows · 45 miles of carriage roads across Mount Desert Island

  The park’s broken-stone carriage roads, closed to cars all year, turn into cross-country ski trails. Volunteers groom sections once more than six inches of snow lies on a frozen roadbed, and walkers and snowshoers are asked to stay off the set tracks. Without snow, the loops around Eagle Lake and Jordan Pond make a sheltered winter walk.

• Driving and walking the shore

  All winter · Ocean Drive and Jordan Pond Road

  Cars can still use Ocean Drive between Schooner Head and Otter Cliff, and the Jordan Pond Road up to the pond. The park suggests Ocean Path and Ship Harbor among the trails for a winter hike. Watch the water for common eiders, long-tailed ducks and loons, and on the coldest, calmest mornings for sea smoke rising off Frenchman Bay.

When is the ice safe on Maine lakes and ponds?

• How to check

  Every time you go out · Any frozen water

  Test from shore outward with an auger, chisel or axe. Ice is thinner near inlets, outlets, springs and current, and clear blue ice beats gray, dark or slushy ice. IFW suggests carrying ice picks within reach, wearing layers without cotton, going with a partner and leaving word of your plans.

When is the earliest sunset in Maine?

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

What can you see in Maine’s night sky in December 2026?

• The Geminid meteor shower

  Night of Sunday, December 13 into Monday, December 14 · Anywhere dark; the radiant near Castor and Pollux is up by mid-evening

  No shower of the year beats the Geminids, and the International Meteor Organization expects a zenithal rate near 150 an hour, with the moon out of the way. In Portland the crescent moon, 18 percent lit, sets at 8:20 p.m. on the 13th, and the radiant climbs highest around 2 a.m. Real counts from a backyard will be far lower than the ideal number, but dozens an hour are possible from a dark site in the North Woods or Downeast.

• The Cold Moon, the closest full moon of 2026

  Evening of Wednesday, December 23 (nearly as full on Christmas Eve) · Rising in the northeast at dusk

  The moon is exactly full at 8:28 p.m. on the 23rd, and the moon’s closest approach to Earth (perigee) follows about seven hours later, making this the year’s nearest and largest full moon; EarthSky and BBC Sky at Night both call it a supermoon. In Portland it rises at 3:29 p.m., some 40 minutes before the 4:08 sunset, so watch for it lifting out of the eastern haze in full daylight. Its light will swamp the faint Ursid meteors, which peak the night before.

• The winter solstice

  Monday, December 21 at 3:50 p.m. · Watch the sunset in the southwest

  The solstice falls close to sunset across Maine. At that instant the sun reaches its southernmost point, so its arc across Maine’s sky is the lowest of the year and it sets well around in the southwest. That evening the bright gibbous moon also passes near the Pleiades in the east.

• Planets

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

  After dark, look south-southwest for Saturn, which sets a little earlier every week and has the evening to itself. Dawn is busier: Venus blazes in the southeast, and Jupiter and Mars shine in Leo, Jupiter coming up by mid-evening as the month ends. A thin old moon joins Venus and the star Spica in the dawn sky on the 4th and 5th.

What can Maine families do outdoors in December 2026?

Safety notes for December in Maine