What to look for in nature in Oklahoma this December

When is the Christmas Bird Count in Oklahoma, and how can you join?

• Tulsa’s count, a century old

  One day between December 14 and January 5; the date is posted by Tulsa Audubon · The Tulsa count circle, mapped on the Tulsa Audubon website

  Tulsa Audubon says its count has been held without a break since 1926, a remarkable run for a volunteer survey. The circle is split into areas, each led by at least one experienced birder, and the society’s page says plainly that you need not be an expert to join a team. Sign up through the society’s Christmas Bird Count page well before the date and dress for a full day outdoors.

• Oklahoma City and the rest of the state

  Dates set by each compiler within the count window · Oklahoma City Audubon and counts statewide

  Oklahoma City Audubon runs a count of its own and posts results online; its 2025 count reached a respectable 118 species. To find a circle near you, use the Audubon count map or the statewide list that Tulsa Audubon links to, and email the compiler directly.

• Counting from home

  Through April 30 · Any yard with a feeder

  If a long day in the field is too much, Project FeederWatch keeps running all winter. Audubon also assigns some volunteers to watch feeders inside a count circle on count day, so if you live inside one, ask the compiler. Record each species by the most individuals in view together, never a running total; that is the habit both projects rely on.

Where can you see trumpeter swans and golden eagles in Oklahoma in winter?

• Trumpeter swans

  About late November to late February · Ponds and lakes in northeastern and north-central Oklahoma; wetlands and stock ponds in the west

  North America’s largest waterfowl spends the middle of winter in Oklahoma, according to the Wildlife Department. Swans from nesting flocks in Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin settle mainly in the northeast and north-central counties, while birds from the High Plains of South Dakota, Nebraska and Wyoming turn up farther west. The department notes that the state once hosted hundreds or even thousands of trumpeters in winter and that numbers are climbing again as the Midwest flocks recover. Adults are entirely white with a long, solid black bill; youngsters are a smoky gray with some pink-orange on the bill. Some birds carry a colored neck collar with letters and numbers. If you can read one, send it to the Wildlife Diversity Program, which uses those sightings to trace where Oklahoma’s swans nest.

• Golden eagles in the west

  All winter · Open country west of Interstate 35; a small resident group in Cimarron County

  The Wildlife Department estimates that about 100 golden eagles come down from the Rocky Mountains each winter, staying mostly west of I-35, while a small group lives year-round in Cimarron County at the tip of the Panhandle. Adults have a golden-brown sheen on the back of the head and neck. A young golden eagle shows a clean white band at the base of the tail, and the department calls that the easiest way to separate it from a brown young bald eagle.

• Bald eagles on eggs

  Egg laying mainly December and January · Nest trees near reservoirs and rivers statewide

  While wintering eagles keep piling onto the big lakes, the state’s own breeding pairs are starting families. The Wildlife Department places egg laying in December or January, so by the holidays some pairs may already be incubating. Keep well back from any occupied nest. For a close view without disturbing anyone, the Sutton Avian Research Center in Bartlesville, which has worked since 1984 to bring Oklahoma’s eagles back from the brink, streams a live bald eagle nest camera from its website.

What hawks and owls can you see in Oklahoma in December?

• Winter hawks at Hackberry Flat

  December through February · Hackberry Flat Wildlife Management Area, southeast of Frederick in Tillman County

  The Wildlife Department lists ferruginous hawks, rough-legged hawks and prairie falcons as frequent winter sights on this 7,566-acre restored wetland. Audubon calls the ferruginous hawk the largest of the soaring buteos; a light adult shows rusty shoulders and leggings and a whitish tail, and soars with its wings raised in a shallow V. The rough-legged hawk nests on the Arctic tundra and often hangs in the wind over a field, hovering as it scans for voles; dark wrist patches under the wings and a white tail with a dark tip are the marks to learn. Drive slowly and check every fence post.

• Great horned owls start duetting

  Hooting builds through December; eggs in late winter · Woodlots, shelterbelts, river bottoms and city parks statewide

  Audubon notes that this owl nests very early, which gives the young the whole summer to learn to hunt, and that its deep, soft hoots carry across the woods on midwinter nights. Listen at dusk for a pair answering back and forth. Great horned owls build no nest of their own, taking over an old one left by a hawk, crow or heron. Find a pair now and you may see a pair of ear tufts poking above an old hawk nest by late winter.

• Eastern screech-owl

  All winter, calling most on calm nights · Every county except Cimarron; tree rows, open woods and wetland edges, including in towns

  The Wildlife Department calls this Oklahoma’s smallest owl: about nine inches tall and seven ounces, in either gray or reddish-brown feathers. It hunts from dusk to dawn along tree rows, open woods and wetland edges, much of it on the wing. Listen after dark for the male’s mellow, eerie trill, two or three seconds of rapid notes on one pitch.

Which Oklahoma animals hibernate, and how do others get through the winter?

• Black bears in their dens

  Denning through winter; cubs born January to March · Eastern Oklahoma’s forested hills and parts of the Panhandle

  The Wildlife Department says Oklahoma’s black bears den up for winter in caves, hollow logs, big trees and under boulders, and that a denning bear can wake quickly if disturbed. Pregnant females give birth in the den between January and March, usually to one to three cubs. If you come on a likely den while hiking, back away quietly.

• Bats in protected caves

  Hibernation through the cold months · Gated caves in Adair, Cherokee and Sequoyah counties

  The Ozark big-eared bat, one of Oklahoma’s rarest mammals with fewer than 2,000 in total, hibernates in limestone and sandstone caves of the Ozark highlands, often the same caves each year. Each time a hibernating bat is woken it burns stored fat that it cannot replace until spring, which is why the Wildlife Department and Rogers State University have fitted steel gates over six of its key caves. Most of the state’s endangered gray bats leave altogether, flying to caves in Arkansas and Missouri for the winter. Never enter a gated or closed cave.

• Chipmunks, beavers and armadillos

  All winter · Chipmunks in the Ozark hills; beavers on streams and ponds statewide; armadillos in the south and east

  Eastern Oklahoma sits on the western edge of the eastern chipmunk’s range, and the Wildlife Department describes these little rodents spending cold spells deep in their burrows, some truly hibernating and others awake but sluggish, living on a cache of nuts and seeds. Beavers never hibernate: they pile sticks and logs underwater near the lodge in fall and gnaw the bark all winter, so fresh chips under a gnawed trunk are a December sign. Armadillos run cool by mammal standards, with body temperatures of 86 to 95 °F, and the department ties their slow march north and east to roads and bridges.

• Tracks in mud and snow

  After rain or the first snow · Creek banks, pond edges, farm roads

  December is a good month to read tracks, since soft mud along creeks and the occasional dusting of snow hold prints sharply. Beaver, raccoon, opossum, deer, coyote and bobcat all leave distinctive marks. Bobcats are mostly nocturnal, and the Wildlife Department says they breed most often in late winter, so the rounded, clawless prints of a cat traveling a creek bank are a winter find.

What stays green in Oklahoma in December, and where does mistletoe grow?

• American mistletoe

  Easiest to see December through February · High in bare deciduous trees

  Look for round, green clumps in the crowns of leafless trees. The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center describes this mistletoe as semi-parasitic, rooted in the branches of sunlit deciduous trees, and notes it is the familiar sprig hung at Christmas. Its white berries are coated with a sticky pulp. Cedar waxwings and bluebirds eat them and spread the seeds by wiping their bills on branches or in their droppings, which is how new clumps start. People should never eat them, so hang any holiday sprig out of reach of children and pets.

• Shortleaf pine

  All year · Ouachita and Ozark hills of eastern Oklahoma

  Oklahoma’s native pine of the eastern hills carries its needles two or sometimes three to a bundle, each three to five inches long, and bears reddish-brown cones. The Wildflower Center notes it gives cover, nest sites and seeds to small mammals and seed-eating birds. In a December oak forest the pines are the dark green ridgelines you see from the Talimena byway overlooks.

• Eastern redcedar

  All year · Pastures, roadsides and canyons statewide

  Oklahoma’s most familiar evergreen is a juniper, Juniperus virginiana, not a true cedar, with scale-like leaves instead of needles. The dusty blue “berries” on female trees are fleshy cones, and the Wildflower Center counts them as winter food for many birds and small mammals.

When does winter start in Oklahoma, and how much snow and ice does December bring?

When is the earliest sunset in Oklahoma?

What can you see in the Oklahoma night sky in December 2026?

• The Geminids

  Night of Sunday, December 13, into Monday morning, December 14 · Anywhere dark; the radiant in Gemini is high in the east by late evening

  On the International Meteor Organization’s 2026 calendar the Geminid rate reaches 150 an hour in theory, the strongest of the annual showers; actual counts are lower, yet a dark rural spot still gives a steady show. A slim crescent moon drops out of the western sky somewhere around 9 or 10 p.m.; after that Oklahoma has true darkness, and the count improves until about 2 a.m., when Gemini stands highest. Many Geminids are bright and unhurried, which makes this an easy first shower for children. Black Mesa State Park in the Panhandle, an International Dark Sky Park, is among the darkest places in the state to watch, but a county road away from town lights works too. The Ursids on December 22 are washed out by a nearly full moon this year.

• The solstice

  Monday, December 21, 2:50 p.m. · Watch the sunset point on the southwestern horizon

  The sun reaches its southernmost point at 2:50 in the afternoon. Note where it sets against a tree or rooftop, then check again in March. As it gets dark that evening, look for the Pleiades just beside the fat waxing moon.

• The Cold Moon, closest full moon of 2026

  Full Wednesday evening, December 23, at 7:28 CST; round on the 23rd and 24th · Rising in the east-northeast around sunset

  December’s full moon arrives early on the evening of the 23rd, only about seven hours before perigee, its nearest point to Earth. That makes it the closest and biggest-looking full moon of the year, a genuine supermoon. By the evening of the 24th the disk has barely begun to thin.

• Planets at dawn and dusk

  All month; crescent moon near Spica and Venus the mornings of December 4 and 5 · Venus low in the southeast before sunrise; Mars and Jupiter higher; Saturn in the south and southwest after dark

  Before dawn Venus hangs low in the southeast, the brightest point in the Oklahoma sky after the moon. A thin old moon slides past Spica and then toward Venus at dawn on December 4 and 5. Higher up, Mars and Jupiter are both in Leo; by late December Jupiter rises in the mid-evening. After dark only Saturn is up, lower in the southwest each week; by New Year’s Eve it goes down roughly four hours behind the sun. After the holidays, the Quadrantids crest late on Sunday evening, January 3, 2027, in a nearly moonless sky.

What can Oklahoma families do outdoors in December?

Safety notes for December in Oklahoma