What to look for in nature in Nebraska this December

When is the Christmas Bird Count in Nebraska, and how can I join?

• Finding a count and signing up

  One day per circle, December 14, 2026, to January 5, 2027 · Count circles statewide, from Scottsbluff and Crawford to Lake McConaughy, Lincoln, Omaha and the Missouri River parks

  Audubon’s online circle finder shows every count with a link to its compiler. Participation is free, and Audubon says every skill level is welcome. The Nebraska Ornithologists’ Union keeps a statewide list of counts as compilers set their dates, and in early October it had none posted for 2026–27 yet, which is normal this far ahead. In the Omaha area, the Audubon Society of Omaha announces its counts on its events calendar, and Wachiska Audubon organizes the Lincoln count. A feeder watcher inside a circle can also report from the kitchen window on count day.

• What Nebraska counts turn up

  Late December and early January · Shelterbelts, open water, juniper canyons and town feeders

  Counts have produced some of the state’s best winter records. The Lincoln count found 39 long-eared owls on December 18, 1977. Great horned owl totals of 30 or more have come from Norfolk, Omaha and Lincoln counts. The Lake McConaughy count logged 157 Townsend’s solitaires on January 2, 2006. And in a strong flight year, Bohemian waxwings showed up by the hundreds on the Panhandle counts: 325 on the Harrison count on December 30, 2007.

Which owls can you find in Nebraska in December?

• Great horned owls pairing up

  Hooting builds through December; eggs from mid to late January · Statewide: shelterbelts, farmsteads, river woods, city parks and cemeteries

  The great horned owl is a common resident in every county, and it nests earlier than any other Nebraska bird. The Birds of Nebraska species account lists eggs from January 18, incubation the same week, and territorial fights and mating in late January and early February. That puts December’s calling at the heart of courtship: a pair often perches near last year’s nest, frequently an old hawk or crow platform, and trades hoots at dusk. The female’s voice is the higher of the two. In some winters, very pale owls from the Canadian prairies wander south into Nebraska; several have been photographed in Keith, Lincoln and Washington counties.

• Long-eared owls in cedar roosts

  Mainly November through March; arrivals in early November · Dense eastern redcedar and juniper stands near grassland or fallow fields, statewide; Cunningham Lake in Omaha has hosted a roost for years

  Long-eared owls are fairly common winter visitors, but they are hard to find because they spend the day pressed against the trunk inside thick cedars, often several to a grove. Observations at a roost near Omaha’s Cunningham Lake found birds present from about November 21 to late March in at least six winters, with as many as 25 at once, and their arrival seemed tied to snow cover building in South Dakota. Look for whitewash and pellets under a dense conifer next to open ground where voles live. If you find one, back away quietly: a flushed owl loses roost time and becomes a target for crows and hawks.

• Short-eared owls at dusk

  Mid-October to late April; numbers vary from winter to winter · Open grassland, CRP fields and wet meadows, most often where snow is light

  This is the owl you can see without searching through trees. Short-eared owls hunt low over open country at dusk with a loose, moth-like flight, and they follow voles, so they gather wherever rodents are plentiful and leave when deep snow hides them. Reports top out in some winters and almost vanish in others; about 44 were reported statewide in 2021–22. Watch from a quiet county road at sunset over a big grassland.

• A snowy owl, maybe

  Usually from mid-November, most often December to February · Open farmland, often near big reservoirs and rivers

  Most winters bring only a few. The invasion of 2011–12 left about 200 reported in Nebraska; in 2024–25 there were two through February. Most Nebraska records come from near big lakes and rivers.

Where do gulls and eagles gather on Nebraska’s open water in December?

• Gulls at Lake McConaughy

  Numbers build through December and may keep rising into January · Lake McConaughy and Lake Ogallala near Ogallala; Sutherland Reservoir; Harlan County Reservoir; Branched Oak Lake near Lincoln

  Lake McConaughy, the state’s largest reservoir, supplies a large share of Nebraska’s gull records, and late fall is when they pile in. Herring gulls are the bulk of the flocks; their numbers swing with the severity of the winter, and big December gatherings have included 540 at Sutherland Reservoir on December 30, 2007, 446 at Harlan County Reservoir and 416 at Lake McConaughy. Mixed in, birders look for rarer northern gulls. Glaucous gulls, pale and with no black in the wing, show up from mid-November and become more frequent in December; McConaughy has had as many as 9 on December 30, 2000. A spotting scope from the dam or the north shore roads helps.

• Eagles where the water stays open

  Building through December; largest numbers usually once ice spreads, in January and February · Below Kingsley Dam; the J-2 hydropower plant south of Lexington; Harlan County Reservoir; the Missouri River

  Bald eagles that wander widely in November settle close to unfrozen water as ice forms. The Central Nebraska Public Power and Irrigation District runs indoor eagle-viewing rooms at its J-2 plant near Lexington and at Kingsley Dam, where eagles fish the open water below the outlets. In each of the past two winters the season opened on the last Saturday of December (December 28, 2024, and December 27, 2025), with weekend hours from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., local time. The 2026–27 dates had not been posted in early October; the district’s eagle webcam shows whether birds are present before you drive.

Which evergreens grow wild in Nebraska, and can you cut your own Christmas tree?

• Ponderosa pine

  Year-round; easiest to pick out against snow · The Pine Ridge, Wildcat Hills and Scotts Bluff; the Niobrara valley east to Keya Paha County

  Nebraska’s only native pine grows here at the eastern edge of its range. The Nebraska Forest Service notes that it reaches down the Niobrara as far as Keya Paha County and south to Custer County. Look for long needles bundled in threes, big prickly cones, and thick bark broken into orange-brown plates on older trees. The seeds feed nuthatches, jays, wild turkeys and red crossbills, nomadic finches whose winter numbers swing wildly: Birds of Nebraska tallied about 900 statewide in 2023–24, but only 65 the next winter, most of them in the Pine Ridge.

• Junipers and Townsend’s solitaires

  Solitaires from October through April; densest in midwinter · Rocky Mountain juniper in the Pine Ridge, Wildcat Hills and around Ash Hollow; eastern redcedar statewide

  Two junipers grow here. Rocky Mountain juniper is native to the Panhandle canyons, eastern redcedar is everywhere, and where they meet, as around Ash Hollow, they hybridize. Both carry waxy blue berries, which are really cones. In the west they feed the Townsend’s solitaire, a slim gray thrush with a white eye-ring and buff wing patches that comes down from the Wyoming and South Dakota mountains for the winter. A solitaire typically claims a few berry-laden junipers and chases other fruit eaters away from them, calling from a treetop with a single clear whistle. Christmas Bird Count data show the highest numbers in the Panhandle, dropping off sharply to the east, and 33 were counted at Cedar Canyon Wildlife Management Area near Gering in February 2022.

• A tree from the national forest

  Permit season has run from late November to December 31 · Bessey Ranger District near Halsey; Pine Ridge Ranger District near Chadron; Samuel R. McKelvie National Forest in Cherry County

  The Bessey district near Halsey began in 1902 as an experiment in planting trees on the Sandhills, and the Forest Service calls it the largest human-planted forest in the United States. Each winter the Nebraska National Forests and Grasslands sell Christmas tree permits for ponderosa pine and eastern redcedar in marked cutting areas. In 2025, permits were sold on Recreation.gov from November 24, cost $10 a tree, up to five trees, for trees up to 20 feet tall with stumps no taller than 6 inches, and cutting ran through December 31. Fourth-grade pass holders in the Every Kid Outdoors program paid just the $2.50 booking fee. As of early October the 2026 season had not been announced; look on Recreation.gov after mid-November.

How do Nebraska animals survive the winter?

• Prairie dogs stay up

  All winter, on mild sunny days · Prairie dog towns in the Panhandle, the Sandhills and southwest Nebraska

  Black-tailed prairie dogs do not hibernate, unlike most of their squirrel relatives. The National Park Service notes that they fatten up in fall, may stay underground for several days in harsh weather, and come up to feed when it turns mild. A calm, bright afternoon after a cold snap is the time to visit a town and watch them clear snow from the mounds and sun themselves at the entrances.

• Turtles and frogs under the ice

  From freeze-up until spring · Ponds, marshes and slow rivers; box turtles in sandy grassland

  A Nebraskaland article explains how painted and snapping turtles get through the winter: they settle into the mud at the bottom of a pond, slow their metabolism almost to a stop, and take in the little oxygen they need through the skin of the cloaca, so they never come up for air. Ornate box turtles, common in the Sandhills, go dormant on land instead, digging a burrow or borrowing one for three to five months. Most hatchlings do not survive their first winter.

• Reading the snow

  The morning after any fresh snowfall · Field edges, creek banks, shelterbelts and your own yard

  A thin fresh snow writes down the night’s traffic. Cottontails leave two long hind prints set ahead of two small front prints. A coyote or fox trots in a nearly straight line of single prints, while a dog wanders. Pheasants and quail leave three-toed tracks that go from cover to food and back again, and mice and voles make tiny paired prints that end at a hole or a tunnel. Follow one trail as far as you can and draw what you find.

What are the chances of a white Christmas in Nebraska?

• The odds, town by town

  December 25 · Omaha, Lincoln, Valentine and North Platte

  The National Weather Service in Omaha puts Omaha’s chance at 33 percent, 42 white Christmases in 126 years of records through 2018. The University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s climate pages count 41 in Lincoln over the 128 years from 1897 to 2024, or 32 percent. Valentine had snow on the ground in 46 of 127 years, about 36 percent, and North Platte in 36 of 136, about 27 percent, according to the Weather Service office in North Platte. North Platte, on the drier High Plains, has the lowest odds of the four.

• The Christmas to remember

  December 1983 · Statewide

  The coldest Christmas Day on record at Omaha and Valentine came in 1983. In Omaha the high was 2 °F and the low −17 °F, with 13 inches of snow on the ground; Lincoln had 14 inches of snow cover and topped out at 4 °F, and Valentine fell to −22 °F. The same Valentine records also hold a 65 °F Christmas Day, reached twice, in 1928 and in 1979.

When is the earliest sunset in Nebraska, and how short is the shortest day?

What is December weather like in Nebraska, and what might El Niño mean for the winter?

What can you see in Nebraska’s night sky in December?

• The Geminids

  Night of Sunday, December 13, into Monday, December 14 · Anywhere dark; the radiant near Castor and Pollux rises in the east-northeast in early evening

  No shower of 2026 is richer than the Geminids. Its zenithal rate, as the International Meteor Organization calls it, is of about 150 an hour for an observer under perfect skies with the radiant overhead; a dark Nebraska pasture shows far fewer, yet still beats every other shower Nebraskans can watch this year. With the young Moon down by mid-evening, the richest hours come around 2 a.m., when Gemini stands highest. Geminids are bright and fairly slow, and some show color. Lie back on a lawn chair under a sleeping bag rather than craning your neck.

• Venus at dawn, Saturn at dusk

  All month · Southeast before sunrise; south and southwest after sunset

  Over the southeastern horizon at daybreak, brilliant Venus gains height morning after morning, and it keeps pulling away from the Sun until January 3, when the gap between them is widest. Look for the old crescent Moon below it, with Spica nearby, early on Friday and Saturday, December 4 and 5. Jupiter and reddish Mars sit in Leo and are up well before dawn; by late December Jupiter rises in mid-evening. After dusk, Saturn has the evening to itself, steady and yellowish in the south after dark and setting earlier as the month goes on.

• The Cold Moon, nearest of the year

  Wednesday evening, December 23; nearly as full on Christmas Eve · Rising in the east-northeast around sunset

  Full phase comes at 7:28 p.m. Central and 6:28 p.m. Mountain on December 23, only about seven hours before perigee, the Moon’s closest approach of its orbit. No full moon this year comes closer to Earth or looks bigger, so it counts as a supermoon. It rides very high across the sky at midnight, as December full moons do, and on snow it throws real shadows. On the solstice evening the waxing Moon slides close by the Pleiades.

What can Nebraska families do outdoors in December 2026?

Safety notes for December in Nebraska