What to look for in nature in Oklahoma this January

When is the best time to see bald eagles in Oklahoma?

• Below the dams

  Best on cold January and February mornings · Keystone Dam west of Tulsa, Pensacola Dam at Grand Lake, Kaw Dam east of Ponca City, Lake Texoma, Fort Gibson and Tenkiller

  Eagles are mostly fish eaters, and the water churned up below a dam stays open and full of stunned fish when lakes upstream skim over. Tulsa Audubon has watched eagles gather below Keystone Dam for decades; TravelOK points visitors to an eagle viewing platform near Brush Creek, downstream of the dam. At Grand Lake, the Grand River Dam Authority keeps an “Eagle Pass” viewing area on the west side of the spillway channel below Pensacola Dam and says January and February mornings are best, when the birds hunt small fish in the release water.

• Refuges and quieter lakes

  December through February · Salt Plains and Sequoyah national wildlife refuges, Lake Thunderbird, Lake of the Arbuckles, Quartz Mountain

  The Wildlife Department calls Salt Plains National Wildlife Refuge the site of the state’s largest gathering of bald eagles, usually 70 or more through the winter, and the refuge’s Eagle Roost Nature Trail runs for about a mile and a quarter. In the southwest, TravelOK says eagles roost in tall cottonwoods along the north shore of Lake Altus-Lugert at Quartz Mountain from late December into early March. Eagles younger than about four years lack the white head and tail, so give every big brown bird a second look.

• Oklahoma’s own nesting pairs

  Eggs in December and January; hatching about five weeks later · Nest trees along the Arkansas River and near the larger reservoirs

  While the visitors loaf, resident pairs are busy. Southern bald eagles lay in December and January, the Wildlife Department says, and sit on the eggs for about 35 days, so Oklahoma’s first eaglets hatch in late winter. The recovery owes much to the George M. Sutton Avian Research Center, which raised and released 275 young bald eagles across the southeastern states between 1984 and 1992, Tulsa Audubon says, and it notes that eagles now nest all along the Arkansas River. Below Pensacola Dam the authority closes an area around one long-used nest each winter (the 2026 closure was announced in January), keeping a buffer of 330 to 660 feet as federal guidelines recommend.

Do whooping cranes and sandhill cranes stay in Oklahoma in January?

• Whooping cranes at Salt Plains

  Winter 2025–26 was the first time a group stayed all season · Salt Plains National Wildlife Refuge, Alfalfa County

  The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reports that eight whooping cranes, six adults and two young of the year, spent the whole 2025–26 winter at Salt Plains instead of continuing to Texas. The first hint came on January 3, when several Christmas Bird Count teams reported them, later than the cranes had ever lingered at the refuge. They came through a late-January arctic blast with single-digit temperatures and eight inches of snow, gleaning waste corn from snowy fields, and left in early March for Wood Buffalo National Park in Canada. No one knows yet whether any will stay this winter. If you find one, the Service asks you to remain inside your car and a quarter mile or more from the birds. The whole wild flock has grown from 16 birds in 1941 to more than 550 today.

• Sandhill cranes in the southwest

  Small wintering groups through January · Washita National Wildlife Refuge near Butler; Jackson County fields

  Washita National Wildlife Refuge, on the upper end of Foss Reservoir, was set aside in 1961 as a wintering home for waterfowl and sandhill cranes, and the Fish and Wildlife Service says it shelters hundreds of thousands of geese every year, which rest on Foss Lake at night and fly out to farm fields by day. Most sandhills move on south, but small numbers spend the season in the southwest. Listen for their rolling, bugled calls overhead on mild afternoons. If you see one very large white crane with black wingtips among gray sandhills, report it.

Where can you see loons, grebes and gulls on Oklahoma lakes in winter?

• Lake Hefner and Lake Overholser

  Loons about November 1 to May 1; rarer gulls best January through mid-March · The dams of both Oklahoma City lakes; Prairie Dog Point on Hefner

  Oklahoma City Audubon calls common loons reliable winter visitors at Hefner, usually fishing in deep water 20 to 50 yards off the rocks along the northern section of the dam. In winter plumage they are gray above and white below, not the checkered black and white of summer. Horned grebes are dependable from about November 1 to May 1, western grebes turn up most dependably from mid-October to the start of January and again in spring, and ring-billed, herring and Bonaparte’s gulls turn up every year. Rarer gulls, such as lesser black-backed and glaucous, are most likely from January into March, and the chapter says partial ice or low water that exposes roosting islands brings the biggest concentrations.

• Lake Tenkiller, the loon lake

  Winter and early spring · Tenkiller State Park and the Driftwood Nature Center near Vian; Blackgum Landing

  Birders rank this Corps of Engineers lake in the Cookson Hills among the region’s top loon spots, and local birders have reported the rarer red-throated, Pacific and yellow-billed loons there as well as the common loon. A loon can stay underwater for a minute or more while it chases fish, so watch the spot where one vanished and then scan outward. In past winters the Sequoyah refuge’s Saturday eagle tours have been paired with an afternoon loon watch at the Tenkiller nature center.

When do great horned owls nest in Oklahoma?

• Great horned owls choosing a nest

  Calling peaks in January; first eggs from about early February · Creek bottoms, shelterbelts, windbreaks, cemeteries and big-city parks statewide

  Oklahoma City Audubon calls the great horned owl one of the state’s earliest nesters and cites the ornithologist George Sutton’s earliest Oklahoma nesting date of February 6, from Marshall County. Clutches run from one to five eggs, most often two. Rather than build, a pair borrows: an abandoned hawk, crow or heron platform, a hollow trunk, even a cliff shelf. Listen at dusk for two owls hooting back and forth, then come back in daylight and look for an old stick nest in the same grove with an ear-tufted head showing above the rim.

• Barred owls in the eastern bottomlands

  Calling on still nights through winter · River and creek bottoms of eastern and central Oklahoma

  In the hardwood bottoms of Green Country and the southeast, barred owls answer with their rhythmic “who cooks for you” call. A barred owl has dark eyes and a rounded head without tufts, while a great horned owl stares back with yellow eyes under two feathered horns.

Which winter birds visit Oklahoma feeders and fields in January?

• Sparrows, juncos and towhees

  All month · Brushy fencerows, woodland edges and backyard feeders

  Fox, song, chipping and field sparrows feed low in thick cover, often alone, and spotted towhees scratch noisily in leaf litter nearby. Dark-eyed juncos, titmice and jays come readily to seed.

• Longspurs and harriers in open country

  Midwinter · Plowed fields, short-grass pastures and wheat stubble, especially in the west

  Flocks of longspurs rise from bare fields with dry rattling calls and settle again a few yards on, feeding where seeds are thick on open ground. Over the same fields a northern harrier, with its white rump patch, quarters low on tilted wings, one of the hawks the Wildlife Department lists as taking refuge here in winter.

• Will northern finches come south?

  Forecast for winter 2026–27 · Feeders statewide

  Probably not many. The Finch Research Network’s September 25 forecast, written mainly for the eastern half of the continent, expects good seed crops in the north to hold most finches there this winter and says no big irruptions are expected in the southeastern states. The Wildlife Department still counts siskins and purple finches among Oklahoma’s winter visitors, so keep a thistle feeder filled.

What are Oklahoma’s mammals doing in the middle of winter?

• Coyotes calling

  Breeding season January through March; pups in spring · Statewide, from wheat country to the suburbs

  Wildlife specialists at Kansas State University Extension, just across the border, say the coyote breeding season runs from January through March and that coyotes become more active and more vocal in it, with more howling, yipping and barking. Pups follow about 60 days after mating. The Wildlife Department explains what the calls mean: a howl tells others where a coyote is, short barks warn of danger, and yips greet pack members. Keep small pets indoors at night and dogs leashed on trails this time of year.

• Black bear cubs born in the den

  Cubs born January through March · Forested hills of eastern Oklahoma

  Inside a hollow log, a cave or a cavity under boulders, a sleeping mother bear gives birth to one to three cubs sometime between January and March, according to the Wildlife Department, and nurses them through the rest of the winter. Bears in Oklahoma’s Ouachita and Ozark hills wake easily, so give rock piles and big hollow trees a wide berth on winter hikes in the east.

How can you identify Oklahoma trees in winter?

• Blackjack and post oak

  All winter · The Cross Timbers of central Oklahoma

  The Wildflower Center in Austin counts these two as the defining trees of the Cross Timbers. Blackjack oak keeps its dull reddish-brown leaves into winter, broad and widening toward the tip, and has nearly black, deeply furrowed bark. Post oak drops its leaves and has grayer bark and leaves with rounded lobes, the upper pair often larger than the rest, like a cross.

• Osage orange

  Fallen fruit lie under the trees through winter · Old hedgerows and fencerows statewide

  The bumpy green “hoss apples” under a thorny tree give it away. The Wildflower Center says the tree’s original range was probably the Red River country of southeastern Oklahoma, northeastern Texas and southwestern Arkansas, and that settlers planted it in rows as living fences on the plains before barbed wire. Look for stout, straight thorns up to an inch long, yellowish-brown furrowed bark and fruit gnawed open by squirrels for the seeds.

• Sycamore, honey locust and sugar hackberry

  All winter · Creek and river bottoms

  Sycamores stand out along streams, their upper bark peeling to smooth white, and some of their round seed balls hang on into winter. Honey locust carries big branched thorns on its trunk and long, twisted brown pods that persist on the tree. Sugar hackberry has smooth, pale bark marked with lighter corky patches and is often loaded with mistletoe, and the Wildflower Center counts at least ten kinds of birds, robins and mockingbirds among them, that eat its small sweet fruit.

How cold and icy is January in Oklahoma, and what could El Niño bring?

How much daylight does Oklahoma gain in January?

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

• Perihelion

  Saturday, January 2, 8:33 p.m. · No viewing needed

  Oklahoma’s coldest weeks arrive with Earth at its yearly closest to the Sun, some 91.4 million miles. Winter here comes from the low angle of the sunlight and the short days, not from distance.

• The Quadrantids

  Late evening Sunday, January 3, through dawn Monday, January 4 · Anywhere dark; face northeast after midnight

  The Quadrantid maximum is brief, and both forecasts place it during the North American night: the American Meteor Society expects it around 9:30 p.m., while EarthSky gives 11:47 p.m. Its radiant in the northern sky climbs higher through the night, so the best rates come in the dark hours before Monday’s dawn, when a slim waning crescent rises late and barely brightens the sky. Under the dark skies of Black Mesa, the state’s International Dark Sky Park, a patient watcher might count several dozen in an hour; town lights cut that sharply.

• Venus at dawn

  Greatest distance from the Sun on Sunday, January 3; bright all month · Low in the southeast before sunrise

  Venus hits greatest western elongation on January 3, blazing at magnitude −4.3; telescope users will see a half-lit disk.

• The Wolf Moon, closest full moon of 2027

  Full Friday, January 22, 6:17 a.m.; best the night of January 21 into the 22nd · Rising in the east-northeast at dusk on the 21st, setting in the west near dawn

  Only about 14 hours after perigee, this full moon sits roughly 222,229 miles from Earth, closer than any other full moon in 2027: a genuine supermoon. It looks round from moonrise on Thursday evening the 21st until it sets on Friday morning, and still nearly full that Friday evening.

• Planets after dark

  All month; Moon near Jupiter the evening of Saturday, January 23; Mercury in the last days of January · Jupiter in the east in the evening; Saturn in the southwest; Mercury very low in the west-southwest after sunset

  Jupiter climbs out of the east in the evening, outshining every star there; on Saturday evening the 23rd the moon, one day past full, passes close to it. Late in the month, binoculars and a flat western view may catch Mercury low in the west-southwest in the half hour or so after sunset.

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

Safety notes for January in Oklahoma