What to look for in nature in New Mexico this December

Is December a good month to see sandhill cranes in New Mexico?

• The Festival of the Cranes

  Wednesday, December 2 – Saturday, December 5, 2026 · Socorro and Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge

  The Friends of Bosque del Apache hold this festival each December, and 2026 is the 37th. It opens on the evening of the 2nd with a keynote at the Socorro Convention Center and fills four days with more than 85 birding tours, photography workshops, hikes and talks, plus a camera and optics expo. Many field trips need advance registration, and popular ones fill early.

• Fly-outs and fly-ins at Bosque del Apache

  Daily: fly-out around sunrise, fly-in toward dusk · South of Socorro, off I-25 at San Antonio

  Gates open an hour ahead of sunrise and close an hour after sunset. Arrive in the dark, find a pond with birds on it, and wait: the snow and Ross’s geese tend to lift off together in a single roaring wave, while the cranes leave in smaller family groups over the following hour. In late afternoon the order reverses, and the cranes glide back in with legs dangling. Bring gloves; December dawns in the valley are often well below freezing.

• Bitter Lake and the Pecos valley

  Through December · Bitter Lake National Wildlife Refuge, northeast of Roswell

  East of the mountains, the smaller lesser sandhill cranes of the Central Flyway use Bitter Lake from October through December, with thousands of snow geese and ducks. Numbers peak around Thanksgiving, so early December still finds big flocks. Drive the tour loop in the last hour of daylight, when flocks return to the water.

Where can you see rosy-finches in New Mexico this winter?

• Sandia Crest is closed this winter

  April 30, 2026 through fall 2027 · Sandia Crest Recreation Site, the Ellis Trailhead and NM 536 beyond the 10K Trailhead

  The Cibola National Forest is enforcing an area closure at the top of the Sandias while it removes hazard trees and rebuilds the summit site. Demolition of the old Crest House began in August 2026, and the Forest Service expects the closure to last through the fall of 2027. The crest parking area, where the famous feeder stood, is inside the closed zone, and hikers coming up the La Luz Trail can ride the Sandia Peak Tramway but cannot walk over to the crest. The classic rosy-finch stakeout is off the table this December.

• Where to look instead

  December through March, in most years · High country of the Sangre de Cristos, the Sandias and the northern ranges

  Birders have long found that rosy-finches start arriving in early November and that a few linger into March, with December through February the surest stretch. Without the crest feeder they are harder to pin down, so watch recent eBird reports from ski areas and high villages after a snowstorm, when flocks often drop lower. The brown-capped rosy-finch breeds only in the high Rockies from northern New Mexico north into Colorado, and any sighting is worth recording carefully.

How do I join a Christmas Bird Count in New Mexico?

• Find a circle and its compiler

  Sign up in November or early December · Audubon’s CBC Circle Finder; local bird clubs and nature centers

  Open Audubon’s online circle finder, pick the count nearest you and write to the compiler with your experience and how far you can walk. In the north, the Pajarito Environmental Education Center runs the Los Alamos count, always on a weekend, with a date set in October once the northern counts have sorted out conflicts; recent years have turned up 74 to 87 species. In Albuquerque, the Bird Alliance of Central New Mexico, formerly Central New Mexico Audubon, has long supported the city’s count.

• What New Mexico counts find

  Count day · Statewide

  Audubon’s summary of the 2014–15 season gives a sense of scale: 33 New Mexico circles found 237 species between them. Caballo, along the Rio Grande below Truth or Consequences, led with 129, ahead of Albuquerque and Las Cruces, and the Bosque circle, centered on the crane refuge, tallied roughly 100,000 individual birds.

When is the winter solstice in New Mexico, and where can you watch it?

• Aztec West at sunset

  Around December 21; in 2025 the program was held December 22 · Aztec Ruins National Monument, Aztec

  The Park Service explains that the north wall of the great house was laid out about 900 years ago so that it lines up with the sun touching the horizon at summer solstice sunrise and again at winter solstice sunset. To protect the site, the alignment can be seen only during special programs. In December 2025 the park held a free, no-reservation observation, with rangers leading visitors to the viewing spot late in the afternoon. Watch the park’s calendar for the 2026 date, and hope for a clear western horizon.

• Sunrise at Kin Kletso

  Around December 21 · Chaco Culture National Historical Park

  Chaco holds a winter solstice program at Kin Kletso, a smaller great house a short walk from the Pueblo del Arroyo parking area, where park astronomers point out the sun rising into place. Winter weather can make the roads into Chaco slick, so call the park before you drive out.

When are the shortest days and earliest sunsets in New Mexico?

What can you see in New Mexico’s night sky in December?

• The Geminids

  From Sunday evening, December 13, until Monday’s dawn · Anywhere dark; the radiant in Gemini is high after midnight

  This is the year’s richest shower. The International Meteor Organization gives it a peak rate of about 150 an hour, a figure that assumes a perfectly dark sky with the radiant overhead; what you actually see will be fewer, yet more than any other night of the year. The young moon goes down by mid-evening, and the hours after midnight, when Gemini climbs highest, are the most productive.

• The Cold Moon, the closest full moon of 2026

  Full at 6:28 p.m. MST, Wednesday, December 23 · Rising in the east-northeast around sunset

  Full and perigee fall only about seven hours apart, so this is the largest and brightest-looking full moon of the year, a true supermoon. Watch it lift out of the east-northeast in the dusk of the 23rd; on Christmas Eve it still looks round. Two nights before full, the moon drifts past the Pleiades, and moonlight swamps the cluster.

• Venus and the morning planets

  Before dawn all month · Southeast to south

  Venus outshines everything but the moon in the dawn sky, mounting higher each morning on its way to greatest western elongation in early January. Look low in the southeast on December 4 and 5 for the waning crescent near Spica and Venus. Jupiter and Mars are in Leo, also morning objects; by Christmas, Jupiter is rising in the middle of the evening.

• Saturn after dark, and the year’s last showers

  Evenings; Ursids December 22; Quadrantids evening of January 3 · South and southwest at dusk; north for the meteor radiants

  Saturn, low in the south-southwest, is the only bright planet in the dusk sky, and by late December it follows the sun down within about four hours. The Ursids peak around the 22nd with the moon almost full, so expect very little. The Quadrantids are a better bet: the meteor organization times their peak for 8:25 p.m. MST on Sunday, January 3, before a dark new-moon week, though the burst is brief.

Which evergreens can you identify in New Mexico in winter?

• Piñon, ponderosa and the junipers

  All year; easiest to compare in winter · Foothills, mesas and lower mountain slopes

  Piñon, the state tree, has short needles in pairs, one to two inches long, and squat cones about as wide as they are long. Ponderosa pine has bundles of three, five to ten inches long, and old trees wear thick, cinnamon-colored bark. Southwestern white pine, higher up, has bundles of five. Among the junipers, one-seed juniper has scale-like leaves on slightly square twigs, Rocky Mountain juniper has tiny leaves pressed tight to the branch, and alligator juniper is unmistakable for its checkered, square-plated bark.

• Spruce, fir and Douglas-fir

  All year · Higher mountain slopes and canyons

  Roll a needle in your fingers. If it rolls, it is a spruce: blue spruce is stiff and very sharp, Engelmann spruce softer. If it is flat, it is a fir or a Douglas-fir. White fir has flat needles two to three inches long that curve upward. Douglas-fir cones hang down, with three-lobed bracts poking out between the scales that the study guide likens to dragons’ tongues.

• Mistletoe in the bare trees

  Most visible in winter · Junipers, piñon, and cottonwoods along the Rio Grande

  In a 2019 column, New Mexico State University’s extension horticulturist described two native mistletoes on the state’s woodland trees: juniper mistletoe on junipers, and piñon dwarf mistletoe, which is harder on its host. A broadleaf mistletoe on cottonwoods has been spreading farther north along the Rio Grande each year and stands out in a bare winter canopy. Birds eat the berries, and some forest scientists now treat mistletoes as a keystone of the woods rather than simply a pest.

• Cutting your own Christmas tree

  Carson National Forest permits on sale November 12 – December 31, 2026 · Designated areas on New Mexico’s national forests; permits on Recreation.gov

  All five national forests in the state sell tree-cutting permits online and by phone. On the Carson, a tree up to 10 feet tall costs $5, 10 to 15 feet $10 and 15 to 20 feet $15, with a limit of three permits a year; the other forests set their own prices and dates. Any fourth grader holding the federal Every Kid Outdoors pass is entitled to one tree at no charge beyond the online processing fee.

How do New Mexico’s animals get through the winter?

• Black bears in their dens

  Most denned by mid-November; out again from late March to May · Mountains statewide

  The Department of Wildlife says most of the state’s bears are in their dens by November 15 and come out between about April 1 and May 1, with females emerging later than males. Cubs are born in the den over the winter. A warm spell can still rouse one briefly, so keep trash secured.

• Abert’s squirrels eat the trees

  All winter; inner bark is most of the diet from November to April · Ponderosa pine forest: the Jemez, the Sandias, the Sacramentos, the Gila

  The tassel-eared squirrel of the ponderosa forest stays active all winter. Once the cones are gone it lives on the tender inner bark of pine twigs, clipping a twig, dropping the needle cluster and stripping the bark, and the Forest Service’s species review puts its winter appetite at about 45 twigs a day. Look under a ponderosa after a snow for a scatter of clipped, green-tipped twigs. In the cold months an adult female and a young one often share a nest.

• Asleep for most of the year

  Hibernating about eight or nine months · Streamside meadows of the Jemez, the Sangres and the Sacramentos

  The endangered New Mexico meadow jumping mouse makes the bear look restless. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says it hibernates eight or nine months a year, waking for only three or four summer months to breed, raise young and fatten up again, and it needs tall, dense streamside plants to survive.

• Bats in the caves

  Through the winter · Fort Stanton Cave, near Capitan, and other caves

  While Carlsbad’s free-tailed bats have flown to Mexico, other species hibernate in New Mexico caves. The Bureau of Land Management closes Fort Stanton Cave in winter to protect them, and recreational caving there is on hold altogether because of white-nose syndrome, the fungal disease that has killed millions of bats in the East. A bat woken from hibernation burns fat it cannot replace, so leave closed caves alone.

• Tracks in the snow at Valles Caldera

  Ski and snowshoe season usually mid-December to mid-March · Valles Caldera National Preserve, Jemez Mountains

  From November 15 the preserve limits winter driving to the Cabin District, and once the snow is deep enough rangers groom ski and snowshoe trails, though not on a guaranteed schedule. The open grasslands of the caldera, home to one of the state’s largest elk herds, are a fine place to read tracks of elk, coyote and mule deer. Some areas can close to protect wintering wildlife, so ask at the entrance.

How cold and snowy is December in New Mexico, and what might El Niño bring?

What can New Mexico families do outdoors in December?

Safety notes for December in New Mexico