What to look for in nature in Michigan this December

The 127th Christmas Bird Count, Audubon’s winter census, starts December 14, 2026, and ends January 5, 2027. Every circle measures 15 miles in diameter, and its volunteers choose one calendar day in that window to tally every bird seen or heard, species and numbers both. In the most recent Michigan summary Audubon has posted, for the 124th count, 75 circles were covered (14 in the Upper Peninsula, 25 in the northern Lower Peninsula and 36 in the southern Lower Peninsula) by more than 1,200 people. That mild season set a state record of 161 species, against a ten-year average of 150.

Count day is the easiest way to learn the winter regulars, from tree sparrows and juncos at the feeder to the ducks and gulls on open water. The Jackson Audubon Society, for one, runs its count around Waterloo State Recreation Area (December 19 in 2025; the 2026 date is not yet posted). Your tally joins a record kept since 1900.

By December the snowy owls that came south this year have mostly picked their winter hunting grounds, and they tend to stay put, which makes them easier to find than in November. The Michigan DNR notes that they favor places that look like tundra: Great Lakes beaches, big meadows and farm fields, sports fields, even parking lots and airports. Their numbers swing widely from winter to winter with lemming crops in the Arctic, so treat every one as a gift.

Many snowy owls that reach Michigan are young and underweight. If an owl turns to stare at you or shifts its feet, back off; watch from the car.

Wherever there is food, and in December that mostly means open water. As inland lakes freeze, eagles crowd onto whatever stays open: dam tailwaters, fast rivers and river mouths on the Great Lakes. The DNR adds that a deer carcass draws them just as surely, and that in winter eagles drop their territorial habits, so two, three or more may work the same stretch of river or the same carcass.

The comeback is real but not finished. DNR aerial surveys counted about 52 nesting pairs in 1961 and roughly 835 by 2017, before bird flu hit eagles hard from 2022. The state wildlife pathologist reports that nearly 13 percent of eagles examined since 1987 died of lead poisoning and about a third were hit by vehicles, and winter scavenging on roadkill and gut piles raises both risks. Lead-free ammunition and a slower drive past a feeding eagle both help.

In most of the Upper Peninsula, deer do not spend the winter where they spend the summer. Once snow on the ground reaches about 12 to 18 inches, they start walking to traditional wintering areas, sometimes as far as 50 miles, and may stay more than 100 days. The DNR calls these places deer wintering complexes, older hunters call them deer yards, and the routes are learned: fawns follow their mothers and come back to the same swamp for life.

Wintering deer live on their fat, so give them room, and leash the dog near cedar swamps. The DNR monitors 46 of these complexes in the U.P.; some of the cedar stands took 300 to 400 years to grow.

Three ways: sleep through it, toughen up, or move out. The Michigan Wildlife Council counts only a handful of true hibernators in the state (woodchucks, striped skunks, chipmunks, thirteen-lined ground squirrels and some bats), whose heart rate, breathing and digestion fall almost to nothing. Black bears are dormant rather than truly hibernating and can wake if disturbed. Wood frogs freeze partly solid under the leaves, protected by a natural antifreeze. Everything else stays up and copes.

Deer farther south change their menu rather than their address, turning to buds, twigs and bark. Every one of these lives leaves a sign in fresh snow; read them the morning after a snowfall, before the wind does.

In a leafless December woods the conifers jump out, and a few needles are all you need to name them. White pine carries soft needles in bundles of five (count the letters in white). Red pine has long, stiff needles in pairs. Eastern hemlock has short, flat needles with two white stripes underneath and tiny cones at the twig tips. Spruce needles are square and sharp, and roll between your fingers; balsam fir needles are flat and soft, and the bark has resin blisters that smell like Christmas when you press them. Northern white cedar has flat sprays of scaly leaves.

Bring home one twig of each and compare.

December is when the ice season begins. NOAA’s Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory says the northern lakes can show their first ice in late November or early December, starting in enclosed bays and along the shoreline, yet across all five lakes ice usually covers only 1 to 2 percent of the water in mid-December. Most of the growth comes in January and February, and the maximum normally arrives between late February and early March. NOAA’s scientists call December the priming month: a cold one sets up a big ice year, while a warm one can leave the lakes nearly open, as in 2024, when the maximum reached only about 16 percent.

Do not trust first ice. The DNR says plainly that no thickness can be relied on. Clear ice with a blue tint is strongest; milky ice from refrozen snow is weak, and ice with slush on top is only about half as strong as clear ice. Treat snow-covered ice as unsafe, since snow insulates it and slows freezing. Keep away from inlets, outlets, dock bubblers and any shore with open water, test with a spud as you go, carry ice picks, and never go out alone. NOAA’s GLERL ice cover page tracks the Great Lakes ice day by day.

Now the Upper Peninsula snowbelts really load up. Lake Superior and Lake Michigan are still mostly open and relatively warm, so each blast of arctic air crossing them turns into lake-effect snow on the downwind shores and hills. NOAA’s 1991–2020 normals put the National Weather Service office near Marquette at nearly 40 inches of December snow, more than four times Detroit’s total. Afternoon highs average in the mid-30s across the southern Lower Peninsula and only about 27 °F on the Marquette hills.

Grand Rapids, downwind of Lake Michigan, averages nearly twice the December snow of Lansing at the same latitude. This winter adds a wild card: the Climate Prediction Center’s September 10 ENSO discussion gives better than 90 percent odds that the El Niño now building in the Pacific will be very strong this fall and winter. The National Weather Service office in Gaylord has looked back: in all three very strong El Niño winters on record (1982–83, 1997–98 and 2015–16), Gaylord averaged more than 7 °F above its 1991–2020 normal for December through February, and across seven strong events its winter snowfall ran about 21 inches short. Warm Decembers line up closely with strong El Niños, the office found, while December precipitation shows little pattern, and about 30 percent of northern Michigan’s El Niño winters still brought above-normal snow. Sault Ste. Marie, ringed by cold water, has warmed far less in those winters. The state climatologist also leans toward a milder, less snowy season. NOAA’s own winter outlook, due out in mid-October, will be posted on the CPC seasonal outlook page. A mild winter can still deliver one sharp storm, so look at conditions for your town before a long drive north, and keep the Michigan frost dates handy for planning next spring’s garden.

In the second week of December, well before the solstice. Detroit’s sun sets at 5:00 p.m. every evening from December 2 through the 15th, so the 9th sits in the middle of that run; Sault Ste. Marie bottoms out at 4:50 p.m. around December 10, the earliest of the eight cities below, and Marquette at 5:02 p.m. around the 11th. Mornings keep getting darker for another month. By the solstice on the 21st, Detroit’s sunset has crept back to 5:03 p.m. while its sunrise has slid to 7:58 a.m., giving 9 hours 5 minutes of daylight; Marquette gets just 8 hours 34 minutes, with the sun up at 8:31. On New Year’s Eve Detroit’s sun rises at 8:01 a.m., still near its latest, and sets at 5:09. The mismatch comes from Earth’s tilt and its slightly oval orbit, which push solar noon later through December. Gogebic, Iron, Dickinson and Menominee counties run on Central time, so their sunsets read an hour earlier.

Our Field almanac gives the times for your own address, day by day, so a late-afternoon walk can end before dark.

With close to fifteen hours of darkness, and more than that in the U.P., December nights give the sky its longest run of the year, whenever the lake-effect clouds part. Times below are Eastern Standard Time; the four western U.P. counties on Central time should subtract an hour.

Moonlight all but erases the Ursids, which crest on the 22nd. The Quadrantids, late on January 3, 2027, get a dark sky just before new moon. Check Today’s sky for clouds before a late night, and the moon page for moonrise in your town.

1. Walk a lantern-lit trail, December 3 to 5, at Seven Lakes State Park in northern Oakland County. The Enchanted Borealis night hike leaves from the Dickinson Shelter in hourly time slots from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m., with warming fires along the way; reservations are required, and the route is hilly and uneven.
2. Or try the Ionia version, December 10 to 12, at Ionia Recreation Area, 5:30 to 8:30 p.m.: a lantern-lit trail with holiday lights and a lakeside campfire afterward. Registration is required; private fire pits cost extra, and the event raises money for the park.
3. Look for winter ducks on Belle Isle, Sunday, December 13, 9 to 11 a.m., with the DNR’s Outdoor Adventure Center. The free program caravans to spots on the island to see waterbirds on the Detroit River; preregister, borrow binoculars if you need them, and bring a Recreation Passport for the island.
4. Stay up for the Geminids that same night, from about 10 p.m. on, and count how many you see in half an hour.
5. Sign up for a bird count. Ask a Christmas Bird Count compiler whether your family can join a team; feeder watchers inside a circle can report from the kitchen window; Project FeederWatch continues through April.
6. Cut your own tree in the Huron-Manistee National Forests with a permit, once the 2026 permits are announced.
7. Plan a New Year’s Day walk. Michigan state parks have joined America’s State Parks’ New Year’s Day program in past years; the 2027 listings were not out in early October, so check in December.

Carry a headlamp on every December outing; the light goes fast after four.

• Deer seasons are not over. Late archery runs December 1 to January 1 statewide. A December firearm season runs December 4 to 6 in the Lower Peninsula, and the muzzleloader season covers the same three days in the U.P. The late antlerless firearm season follows from December 7 to January 1 in Lower Peninsula deer management units except 145 and 245, on public and private land. Elk hunts run December 1 to 15 in the northeast Lower Peninsula elk range.
• Birds and small game. Duck season closes December 13 in the South Zone and reopens December 26 and 27; the Middle Zone adds December 12 and 13. Goose seasons run to December 16 in the North Zone and December 18 in the Middle Zone; in the South Zone they close December 13 and reopen December 26 to January 3. Late ruffed grouse and the December pheasant season run December 1 to January 1; rabbit, snowshoe hare and squirrel stay open to March 31.
• Hunter orange. Deer hunters using a firearm need an orange outer garment (a hat or cap, a vest or jacket, or rain gear) that can be seen from every side, and orange camouflage qualifies only when at least half of it is orange. A bowhunter out during any firearm deer season has to meet the same rule. Small-game hunters, crow hunters excepted, must wear orange until April 30. The DNR asks anyone outdoors near hunting areas to wear orange too, and an orange vest on the dog is a sensible extra.
• Ice. Keep children and dogs off December ice; first ice is the most dangerous of the year, and ice under snow is weaker than it looks.
• Lake-effect squalls and cold. A single band of lake-effect snow can drop visibility to nothing on one stretch of road while the next town sits in sunshine. Keep a shovel, blanket, boots and a charged phone in the car, and turn back early on short afternoons.