What to look for in nature in Oklahoma this February

When do bald eagle eggs hatch in Oklahoma, and when do the winter eagles leave?

• Eaglets in the nest

  Hatching from about late January through February and into March · Nest trees near the big reservoirs and along the Arkansas River and other large rivers

  Southern bald eagles lay their eggs in December and January, according to the Wildlife Department, and incubate for about 35 days. Do the arithmetic and many Oklahoma nests hold tiny gray chicks during February, with later pairs still incubating. The adults trade places on the nest often and bring in food. Watch from a vehicle or a long way off with a spotting scope: disturbing nesting eagles is illegal under federal law. Chased off the nest on a cold, windy day, a parent leaves small chicks to chill.

• The Sutton Center eagle cam

  Live all season · Online, on the Sutton Center’s website

  The George Miksch Sutton Avian Research Center in Bartlesville, which began restoring Oklahoma’s nesting eagles in 1984, streams a live bald eagle nest camera on its website. In February 2025 the center reported three eggs in the nest. The same center recruits volunteers for its Bald Eagle Survey Team.

• Winter visitors heading north

  Numbers thin through February and March · Salt Plains, Kaw, Keystone, Fort Gibson, Tenkiller and other big lakes

  As the month goes on, look for wintering eagles to scatter from their roosts. Other big birds leave on a similar clock: last winter’s family group of eight whooping cranes stayed at Salt Plains National Wildlife Refuge into early March before flying toward Canada, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reported. If you count eagles on a late-February trip, compare your total with a January visit to the same dam.

Why do Oklahoma prairies burn in late winter?

• Prescribed burns

  Dormant season, on days the weather allows · Ranches, wildlife refuges and preserves statewide; watch for smoke columns on calm afternoons

  Fire kept the prairie open long before settlement: the Oklahoma Conservation Commission notes that Native Americans burned to bring up fresh grass for bison and other game, and lightning lit more. Planned burns now do the same job, and the commission calls burning the cheapest way to control eastern redcedar. Last February the staff at Salt Plains National Wildlife Refuge burned about 1,500 acres, and the refuge’s wintering whooping cranes went out of sight for a week, probably feeding in the blackened ground. After a burn, watch the black ground turn green within weeks of the first warm rain.

• Why a small cedar dies and a big one survives

  Any burn · Pastures and old fields invaded by redcedar

  Eastern redcedar has thin bark and cannot resprout from its roots, so fire kills it while it is small. Fire summaries kept by the U.S. Forest Service cite an Oklahoma study in which a burn killed 82 percent of redcedars 2 to 5 feet tall but only 39 percent of those 8 to 16 feet tall. That is the case for burning early and often: the taller a cedar grows, the more likely it is to survive the next fire.

• February wildfires

  Most dangerous on warm, dry, windy days · Especially the western half of the state

  The Oklahoma Mesonet’s monthly summaries show the pattern. In late February 2024, a fire that had already burned more than a million acres in the Texas Panhandle spread into Ellis and Roger Mills counties on winds gusting past 60 mph. February 2026 was the warmest February in Oklahoma since records began in 1895, and wildfires burned nearly 200,000 acres in Oklahoma that month; one of them, the Ranger Road fire, covered more than 280,000 acres on both sides of the Kansas line.

Why is February cedar fever season in Oklahoma?

• Rusty-gold pollen cones

  Cedar fever often peaks January through February; Oklahoma’s own redcedars shed from about February into early spring · Male redcedars on pastures, roadsides and fencerows statewide

  Allergists call the illness cedar fever, and News On 6, quoting the Oklahoma Allergy and Asthma Clinic, says cedar fever is a reaction to mountain cedar pollen that surges from late November to February and often peaks from January through February. Oklahoma’s own eastern redcedar joins in a little later: the U.S. Forest Service says it begins shedding pollen as early as February in the southern part of its range. The trees are either male or female. By late winter, male trees look tinged with rust from thousands of tiny pollen cones at their tips; shake a branch on a dry, breezy day and a yellow cloud drifts off.

• Blue berries and the birds that plant them

  All winter · Female redcedars, often with flocks of waxwings and robins

  Female trees carry the waxy blue “berries,” which are really small cones. The Forest Service lists waxwings, bobwhite, wild turkeys, foxes, raccoons, opossums and coyotes among the animals that eat them, especially in winter, and notes that seeds can pass through a bird within half an hour. That is how a fence line becomes a cedar row: perching birds drop the seeds beneath them.

• A spreading problem

  Year-round · Statewide; mapped in detail across a dozen central and northwestern counties

  In a fact sheet based on estimates from the Natural Resources Conservation Service in the early 2000s, the Oklahoma Conservation Commission reported that cedars were taking over about 762 acres a day, some 300,000 acres a year, and that cedar pollen counts had tripled between 1988 and 1996. Payne County went from fewer than 500 acres of cedar in a 1984 inventory to more than 50,000 by 2005. The commission adds that cedars push out grassland birds and drink water that grass and streams would otherwise get.

When do frogs start calling in Oklahoma?

• Strecker’s chorus frog

  Usually from late February into March · Most of Oklahoma; temporary ponds, flooded fields and ditches in sandy country

  The Wildlife Department describes the call of this stout little frog as a single high whistle repeated quickly. It is a burrower and, unusually, digs forward with its strong front legs rather than backing in with its hind feet. Adults are only 1½ to 2 inches long.

• Spring peeper

  Usually from February into April · Only the extreme eastern counties, in wooded wetlands

  In Oklahoma the peeper lives right along the Arkansas line. The Wildlife Department says breeding here usually begins in February and calls the peeper one of the first signs of thawing weather. Males call from shrubs and tall grass over shallow wooded ponds; the frogs are under 1½ inches long, so you will hear far more than you see.

• Cajun chorus frog

  Late winter into spring, for several months · Eastern Oklahoma; small ponds, ditches, swamps and marshes

  Its trill is often likened to running a fingertip slowly along a comb’s teeth, repeated about 20 times a minute. The Wildlife Department notes that breeding begins in late winter or early spring depending on the weather and goes on for months.

• Small-mouthed salamander migration

  Rainy nights, usually February or March · Woodlands and pastures near ponds

  This dark mole salamander lives underground most of the year. During rainstorms in late winter it walks to breeding ponds, and the Wildlife Department says the migration usually lasts only a few days. A slow drive or walk on a wet back road after dark is the way to see one; move any you find across in the direction they were heading.

Which birds return to Oklahoma first in February?

• Purple martins

  Adults from mid-February through May; young birds four to six weeks later · Martin houses and gourd racks statewide, often near water

  The Wildlife Department says adult martins reach Oklahoma from mid-February, with last year’s young birds following later. Oklahoma City Audubon notes that the earliest records fall in February, that males tend to come about a week before females, and that a long cold snap soon after arrival can starve early martins, because they eat only flying insects. Landlords can report their first bird to the Purple Martin Conservation Association’s Scout-Arrival Study.

• The woodcock’s sky dance

  Dusk and dawn on calm evenings, February into spring · Brushy fields and thickets near wet woods in central and eastern Oklahoma; Lake Draper in Oklahoma City

  Though related to sandpipers, the American woodcock is a round, long-billed bird of damp thickets. Oklahoma City Audubon says courtship starts very early in the year, with birds heard in January at Lake Draper. At dusk a male gives a buzzy “peent” from the ground, then spirals 50 to 100 yards up and tumbles back down with a twittering wing sound and a liquid chirping song. Wait quietly beside a weedy clearing starting about 15 minutes after sundown.

• Phoebes, blackbirds and killdeer

  Building through late February · Culverts and bridges, cattail marshes, pastures and parking lots

  Oklahoma City Audubon calls the eastern phoebe one of spring’s most welcome signs: a gray flycatcher that wags its tail and says its own name, nesting under bridges and eaves. Oklahoma City Audubon’s February field notes also include killdeer back at Liberty Lake and turkey vultures overhead. Not every bird is coming north; the light geese are leaving, and the Wildlife Department opens its Conservation Order light goose season on February 15, after the regular goose seasons close.

What is blooming in Oklahoma in February?

• Ozark witch-hazel

  January into April, sometimes with snow on the ground · Gravel bars and rocky streambeds in the Ozark hills of northeastern Oklahoma

  The Missouri Department of Conservation describes this shrub’s range as the Ozark Plateau of southern Missouri, northwestern Arkansas and northeastern Oklahoma, where it is typical of gravel bars along clear streams. Its fragrant flowers have four narrow, crinkled petals in orange to dark red, and they open in the middle of winter. Look along streams in the Ozark hills on a sunny afternoon, when the scent carries.

• American and slippery elm

  Slippery elm from January, American elm from February · Creek bottoms, stream banks and old fields statewide

  The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center gives slippery elm a bloom time beginning in January and American elm from February. Neither has petals; the flowers are small reddish tufts that cover the bare twigs and give the treetops a faint rusty haze from a distance. Flat, winged seeds follow within weeks.

• Spring beauty

  From late winter on mild days · Rich, moist woods and thickets in eastern Oklahoma

  The first native wildflower many families find is this low plant with five white or pale pink petals striped in darker pink. The Wildflower Center lists a bloom season that can start as early as January and run into May.

Is February snowier than January in Oklahoma, and what could El Niño bring?

How much daylight does Oklahoma gain in February?

What can you see in the Oklahoma night sky in February 2027?

• Mercury at dusk

  Best around Tuesday, February 2, through about February 10; thin crescent moon nearby the evening of Sunday, February 7 · Low in the west-southwest 30 to 45 minutes after sunset

  Mercury swings farthest from the Sun’s glare around midnight as February 2 turns to February 3, giving Oklahomans the planet’s finest evening appearance this winter. The day after the February 6 new moon, on Sunday evening the 7th, a razor-thin crescent pairs up with Mercury in the glow. Wheat-country horizons in western Oklahoma suit this low planet well; binoculars make the search easier.

• No eclipse here on February 6

  Saturday, February 6 · Visible only from the Southern Hemisphere and Africa

  On February 6 the Moon makes a ring-shaped solar eclipse, but its path tracks over Chile, Argentina and the ocean beyond toward the coast of West Africa. Oklahomans see no part of it, not even a partial bite.

• Jupiter at opposition

  Wednesday, February 10, 6:21 p.m. · Rising in the east at sunset; up all night

  Opposite the setting Sun in Oklahoma’s sky, the king of planets lifts out of the east at dusk, shining at magnitude −2.5, as bright as it gets in 2027. Steady your binoculars against a car roof, and Jupiter’s four big moons can show as a row of faint sparks beside the planet.

• Mars at opposition

  Friday, February 19, about 9 a.m.; closest to Earth on the 20th · Rising in the east at dusk, in Leo near the star Regulus

  Mars stays about 63 million miles away at this opposition, one of the far ones, so a telescope shows only a small disk. To the eye it is an obvious orange-red point, brighter than any star near it.

• The Snow Moon and a faint eclipse

  Full Saturday, February 20, 5:23 p.m. · Rising in the east around sunset

  When Oklahomans first see the Snow Moon on Saturday evening, it is already partway through Earth’s pale outer shadow. Greatest eclipse comes at 5:13 p.m., before moonrise in Oklahoma, and the penumbral phase ends at 7:13 p.m. Expect, at best, a subtle dusky tint along one limb of the low moon, which most watchers miss entirely, and the farther west you are in the state, the less of it is left once the moon clears the horizon. Supermoon status for this one is a split decision: the Old Farmer’s Almanac grants it, while EarthSky’s tighter list leaves it off. Late on Friday the 19th the fat gibbous Moon passes extremely close to Jupiter; a night later, Mars and bright Regulus sit nearby too, all within Leo.

• Venus and Saturn

  All month · Venus low in the southeast before dawn; Saturn low in the southwest after dusk

  Venus blazes in the southeast before every dawn. Saturn hangs lower in the southwestern twilight every week, on its way to solar conjunction on April 7.

What nature events and programs are on in Oklahoma in February 2027?

Safety notes for February in Oklahoma