What to look for in nature in North Dakota this February

When do great horned owls and bald eagles lay eggs in North Dakota?

• Great horned owls on eggs

  Nesting begins in February; the female incubates through late winter cold · Old hawk, crow and magpie nests in shelterbelts, farmstead groves, river woods and town parks statewide

  These owls borrow other birds’ stick nests rather than building. A Game and Fish magazine story followed a female that settled on February 8 into a stick nest about 30 feet up a tree at the department’s Bismarck headquarters, a nest Swainson’s hawks had built two or three years earlier. The day began below zero and climbed only into the single digits, and the writer noted that without her body heat the eggs would have frozen. Her mate hunted voles, cottontails and birds and brought them to the nest, and two owlets hatched and later flew. To find one, look in late February for a nest with what seems to be a lump of bark or a pair of ear tufts showing above the rim. After a snowfall an incubating owl may have a cap of snow on her back, because she will not leave the eggs to shake it off.

• Bald eagles start laying

  Eggs from late February to mid-March · Big cottonwoods along the Missouri, Red, Sheyenne and James rivers and around Devils Lake, and in shelterbelts far from water

  The eagle pairs that were carrying sticks in January are close to laying by the end of February. Once the first egg is down, one adult stays low in the nest almost constantly, so a nest that suddenly looks empty except for a white head at the rim is probably being incubated. This is the stage when disturbance does the most harm: a bird flushed from its eggs in subzero wind can lose the clutch to the cold. Watch with binoculars or a spotting scope from the road, keep well back, and report new nests to Game and Fish.

Which North Dakota animals start breeding or having young in February?

• Skunks on the move

  Males leave their dens early to mid-February; breeding from late February into April · Farmsteads, field edges, road ditches and town edges statewide

  Skunks sleep through the worst of winter in dens but do not truly hibernate, and the first wanderers are males searching for females. That is why a February thaw so often brings the smell of skunk along highways and into towns. In snow, look for a short, waddling trail with the front and hind prints close together, often running from a culvert, a granary or the space under a deck. Give any skunk you meet plenty of room, and keep dogs leashed at dusk.

• Raccoons and mink

  Raccoon breeding mid-February to late March; mink from late February · Wooded creeks, river bottoms, cattail sloughs and farm buildings

  Raccoons hole up in cold snaps and travel on milder nights, and in February they travel to find mates. Their tracks look like small handprints, often along a creek edge or between farm buildings. Mink follow open water, so the edges of springs, spillways and fast riffles that stay unfrozen are the places to look for their bounding pairs of prints, sometimes ending at a hole in the snow by the bank.

• Fox kits and otter pups, unseen

  Both born from late February · Fox dens in pasture banks, coulees and shelterbelts; otters along the Red River and its tributaries

  The foxes that paired up in January give birth in dens from late February into March, so a well-used hole in a sunny bank with fresh tracks around it is worth noting and leaving alone. River otters are less familiar. Game and Fish describes them as uncommon year-round residents whose established population lies along the Red River of the North and its tributaries, with occasional sightings on the Missouri. Open water matters to them in winter for feeding, and their sign is easiest to find there: slides down snowy banks, and trails between holes in the ice.

What are the first spring birds to return to North Dakota?

• Horned larks on the first bare ground

  Some all winter; more as soon as fields and road shoulders start to go bare, in February in a mild year and March in a snowy one · Gravel roads, summer fallow, stubble and overgrazed pasture, especially in the southwestern half of the state

  In a Natural North Dakota segment for Prairie Public, Chuck Lura notes that horned larks feed on seeds and insects in open country where plants are short and sparse, and that in winter you often flush them from the edges of highways and gravel roads. Naturalists in the Red River Valley, among them the Grand Forks Herald columnist Mike Jacobs, watch for the first larks as soon as bare ground appears, usually on rural roads and summer-fallowed fields, which tend to shed snow sooner than grassland. The field marks are a black mask, a dark bar across the breast and a yellow-tinged face on a bird a bit bigger than a sparrow; the tiny feather horns are hard to see unless it raises them. The same birds are among the earliest nesters in the state, with Game and Fish putting peak breeding from late March into July.

• Snow buntings in their last weeks

  Flocks through February, thinning by early spring · Open farmland, often with horned larks

  Lura also describes snow buntings rising from the road in front of cars, a swirl of white wings with black tips. They are Arctic nesters, and the mixed flocks of buntings and larks along a country road are one of the best late-winter sights in the state. Count them, note which species outnumbers the other, and see which way the balance tips as the month goes on.

Will North Dakota rivers flood this spring, and how do the February flood outlooks work?

• What the forecasters measure

  Outlooks usually every other Thursday from late January to late March · Red River and Devils Lake basins (Grand Forks office); Missouri, James, Souris and other western and central basins (Bismarck office)

  The outlook is not a guess about one storm. It weighs the water held in the snowpack (the snow water equivalent), how wet the soil was going into winter, how deep the frost runs, the condition of river ice, and the long-range outlooks for temperature and precipitation. In its February 27, 2025 outlook for western and central North Dakota, the Bismarck office explained that snow water was below normal everywhere and that very dry soils were soaking up much of the meltwater, which kept the flood risk low. A deep, wet snowpack over frozen, saturated ground gives the opposite answer. The current outlooks and briefing slides are posted on each office’s flood page.

• Read the snow yourself

  Any time after a big snow; melt usually starts in March · Your own yard or a flat, open spot away from drifts

  You can do a kitchen version of the forecasters’ measurement. Push a straight-sided can down through the snow to the ground, slide a piece of cardboard under it, let the snow melt indoors and measure the water. Divide the snow depth by the water depth. Fresh, fluffy snow gives a big number; old snow that the wind has packed for weeks gives a much smaller one, because it holds more water in every inch. Record the date and the numbers, and compare them with the Weather Service’s snow maps.

What is darkhouse spearfishing, and how long does North Dakota’s ice season last?

• Watching the window

  Through March 15, wherever the ice is safe · Lakes across the state; walleye may also be speared in the Devils Lake complex south of US Highway 2, Stump Lake, and Lakes Sakakawea and Oahe

  Northern pike and nongame fish are the legal targets, and the regulations allow walleye only on the waters listed here and channel catfish only on the Missouri River system, a new addition this cycle. Game and Fish also dropped the old registration requirement: after 25 years of records, and with fewer spearers answering its surveys, the department decided registration was no longer needed to keep pike populations healthy. Even if you never hold a spear, a darkhouse is a remarkable way to see a lake from inside. With the light shut out, the water below glows green, and perch, pike and the occasional minnow school drift across the opening as if on a stage.

• The March 15 house deadline

  Plan for it in late February · All waters

  From midnight on March 15 until ice-out, every unoccupied ice house must be off the ice, and fish houses cannot stay on state-owned or managed land after that date either. Abandoned holes wider than 10 inches must be marked. By late February, snow-covered lake ice can still be thick yet weakening, so it pays to plan the haul before a warm spell softens the shoreline.

What can you see in Theodore Roosevelt National Park in February?

• Prairie dogs on a mild day

  Above ground on calm, sunny days; underground through harsh spells · Prairie dog towns beside the park roads in the South Unit and North Unit

  The black-tailed prairie dog, the only prairie dog species in the park, does not hibernate. The National Park Service says the animals store body fat in fall, may stay below ground for several days in severe weather, and drop into periods of torpor during the coldest stretches, but on milder days they come up to forage. Mating follows in March and early April. In February, then, a town can look abandoned one morning and busy the next, with sentries sitting upright on the mounds and the sharp, squeaky bark passing from burrow to burrow when a hawk or coyote shows up.

• Golden eagles near their cliffs

  Near nest sites from February; peak breeding early April to July · Cliffs and big trees in the badlands and along the Missouri Slope

  Game and Fish says golden eagles in North Dakota nest mostly in the badlands and on the Missouri Slope, usually on cliffs that often face south, sometimes in cottonwood or green ash. Its management guidance asks people to keep activity at least half a mile from active nests from February to mid-September, which tells you the birds are back at their territories this month. Along the Little Missouri, scan the ridgelines for a very large, all-dark eagle whose head and neck glint gold in low sun, and enjoy it from the road.

How cold and snowy is February in North Dakota, and what has El Niño done to it before?

How much daylight does North Dakota gain in February?

What can you see in the North Dakota night sky in February?

• Jupiter at opposition

  Evening of Wednesday, February 10 · Rising in the east at sunset, high in the south around midnight, in Leo

  Jupiter’s opposition falls at 6:21 in the evening, Central time. Glowing at magnitude −2.5, Jupiter beats Sirius for brightness, and since it rises around sunset, you can find it at any hour of a clear February night. Steady binoculars braced on a fence post reveal up to four of its moons as pinpoints in a line.

• Mars at opposition, small but bright

  Friday, February 19; closest to Earth February 20 · In Leo, east of Jupiter in the evening, up all night

  Mars has its turn on the 19th and makes its nearest pass on the 20th, roughly 63 million miles off. Because the red planet is close to its outermost point from the sun, this year’s opposition is a small one, but at magnitude −1.2 it is still an obvious orange light. Compare its steady color with the bluish-white star Regulus nearby.

• The Snow Moon and a faint eclipse

  Full at 5:23 p.m. CST on Saturday, February 20 · Rising in the east around sunset, beside Jupiter, Mars and Regulus

  February’s full moon is a near-supermoon, counted as one by some almanacs but not by others. That evening also has a penumbral lunar eclipse: the moon slides only through the pale fringe of Earth’s shadow. Its deepest point comes at 5:13 p.m. CST, while the moon is still below the North Dakota horizon, so Central time observers get only the tail end, which finishes at 7:13 p.m. If anything shows, it will be a barely darker smudge on part of the moon’s face while it hangs low in the dusk; few people will see any difference. In the Mountain time corner there is effectively nothing left to see by moonrise. Far better is the company the moon keeps: Jupiter, Mars and the star Regulus all sit within the same patch of Leo. A night earlier, Friday into Saturday, the swelling moon slips very close by Jupiter.

• Mercury low in the west

  Best around the night of February 2–3; with a thin crescent moon on Sunday, February 7 · Low in the west-southwest, 30 to 45 minutes after sunset

  Mercury swings farthest east of the sun, as seen from Earth, overnight on February 2–3 and stays catchable for about a week on either side. An open view to the west, with no trees or buildings, is essential. On Sunday the 7th, a sliver of moon only about a day old hangs near the planet, a fine challenge for binoculars. Saturn is sliding down into that glow too, while Venus remains the dazzling morning star low in the southeast.

• Northern lights

  Any clear night; darkest evenings about February 2–11 · Low in the north, away from town lights

  NASA and NOAA announced in October 2024 that the solar maximum had arrived, and activity has since begun to ease, but big storms on the sun can still light up the northern sky, and North Dakota’s latitude puts many of them in view. With the moon out of the way from about February 2 to 11, faint glows are easier to catch. For a short-range heads-up, check the aurora outlook from NOAA’s space weather forecasters.

What can North Dakota families do outdoors in February 2027?

Safety notes for February in North Dakota