What to look for in nature in Oregon this November

Where do swans, geese and cranes spend November in Oregon?

• Sauvie Island

  Waterfowl and cranes September to March; eagles best January to March · Northwest of Portland, off Highway 30

  Much of ODFW's wildlife area is shut to the public from October 1 to April 15 so the birds can feed and rest undisturbed, but the Raccoon Point overlook, the Eastside viewing platform, Rentenaar Road, the Columbia River beaches and the trail to Warrior Rock stay open. Sandhill cranes, swans, ducks and geese use the island through the winter. A wildlife-area parking permit is required at all times.

• Dusky geese at Finley

  Through the winter · William L. Finley National Wildlife Refuge, south of Corvallis

  This refuge was created for the dusky Canada goose, which nests on the Copper River Delta in Alaska and spends the winter almost entirely in Willamette Valley wetlands. Walk the Woodpecker Loop or the boardwalk to the observation blind; the Fish and Wildlife Service suggests a winter visit for swans and Roosevelt elk as well. Finley is free and open every day from dawn to dusk.

• The Klamath Basin's biggest month

  Largest numbers usually mid-November · Klamath Marsh, Lower Klamath and the Klamath Falls area

  According to the Klamath Basin Birding Trails, the fall flight through the basin runs from mid-October to late November and usually crests in mid-November, with one to two million ducks, geese and swans on the move. Lower Klamath straddles the state line between Klamath Falls and Tulelake, California. Water on the refuges varies a great deal from year to year, so check the Fish and Wildlife Service's refuge pages before a long drive.

• Tundra swans at Malheur

  October and November · Buena Vista, Knox, Benson and Dredger ponds; Krumbo Reservoir

  The Friends of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge call the big gatherings of tundra swans a highlight of the cold season, with hundreds sometimes on a single pond. Look also for Barrow's and common goldeneyes and hooded mergansers. Duck numbers drop as the weather turns, the Friends explain, because cold leaves little open water.

• Eagles and winter hawks

  Migrant eagles arriving through November; Klamath peak in February · Klamath Basin, Harney Basin, river valleys statewide

  Rough-legged hawks from the Arctic, along with golden and bald eagles, spend the winter around Malheur; scan power poles and lone trees along the refuge roads. In the Klamath Basin, the Birding Trails site says wintering eagles are present in impressive numbers from early December to mid-March and peak in mid-February, so November is the month you see the first ones settle in. On the west side, eagles work the rivers wherever spawned-out salmon wash up.

Which salmon are still spawning in Oregon in November?

• Coho in the Mount Hood foothills

  November · Wildwood near Welches, Metzger Park near Estacada, Eagle Creek

  ODFW names November as coho month in Clackamas County. The BLM's Wildwood Recreation Site on Highway 26 has an underwater viewing window on the Salmon River; Metzger Park, about five miles south of Estacada, gives access to spawning water; and tributaries in the Columbia River Gorge such as Eagle Creek often hold fish, as does the Old Salmon River Trail near Mount Hood.

• The central coast's chinook

  Best in the first half of November · North Fork Alsea at Clemons Park, the Salmon River, Drift Creek, Whittaker Creek

  Around Newport, ODFW puts the best viewing in the first two weeks of the month. Try the Van Duzer corridor of the Salmon River off Highway 18, Drift Creek on the Siletz, and Whittaker Creek in the Siuslaw basin.

• Chum near Tillamook

  Catch-and-release season to November 15 · Kilchis and Miami rivers

  Chum are poor jumpers, so they spawn low in a river, below falls and dams. Oregon sits near the southern edge of their range, and the Kilchis and Miami, which run into Tillamook Bay, are the two rivers where ODFW allows catch-and-release chum fishing, from September 16 to November 15.

• Douglas County coho

  Late November to early December · Cow Creek, the South Umpqua, Little River

  ODFW points to Island Creek Day Use Area and Long Fibre Park on Cow Creek, tributaries of the South Umpqua such as Deer Creek and Myrtle Creek, and the North Umpqua where Little River joins it. In Coos County the coho come later still, peaking in December on the Coos and from late December into January on the Coquille.

When is the deer rut in Oregon, and where do elk gather for winter?

• Black-tailed bucks on the move

  Rut October to December · Willamette Valley edges, the Coast Range, Southern Oregon foothills

  Look for scrapes (pawed patches of bare ground under an overhanging branch) and saplings with the bark rubbed off at knee to waist height. ODFW notes that attacks are rare but that bucks can turn aggressive in the rut, so give any buck in a yard or park a wide berth and never try to feed one.

• Jewell Meadows Wildlife Area

  Elk viewing November to April · Clatsop County, southeast of Astoria

  ODFW's season for elk watching here opens in November, and the area holds up to 200 Roosevelt elk through winter and spring. There are two paved parking areas and four viewing spots with signs; the main meadow is a refuge with no public entry. The staff-led feeding tours wait until December, and phone reservations (503-755-2264) open on December 1 at 8 a.m. A parking permit is required.

When are the king tides on the Oregon coast this year?

• The Oregon King Tides Project

  November 23–27, 2026 · Anywhere on the coast or a tidal river

  Volunteers photograph the highest water against something fixed, a seawall, a piling, a bridge footing, a road edge, and upload the pictures with the place, date and direction to the project's site, which the state's Coastal Management Program supports. Explore Lincoln City lists the season's three windows as November 23–27, December 22–26 and January 20–24, 2027.

• Spray on the seawall

  Around the noon high tide, best with a west swell · Depoe Bay, Shore Acres, Cape Perpetua and other headlands

  A king tide on a calm day is quiet; one that coincides with a winter swell throws water over the Depoe Bay seawall and onto the cliffs at Shore Acres. Watch from a railing or a parked car above the beach. The same water floods low spots on Highway 101 and the bay roads, so allow extra time.

• The last of the summer gray whales

  Until about mid-November · Central coast; Depoe Bay

  Oregon State Parks says the resident gray whales feed close to shore from June to mid-November, so the first week or two of the month is the last chance for them. The big southbound migration, thousands of whales heading for Baja, follows from mid-December to mid-January.

Which winter birds come to Oregon yards and feeders in November?

• Varied thrush

  From late fall through winter · Yards with shrubs and leaf litter west of the Cascades

  Robin-sized, slate blue with an orange throat, orange wing bars and a dark band across the chest, the varied thrush breeds in the dark conifer forests and comes down to lower woods and gardens for the winter, especially when snow covers the mountains. In winter it eats berries, fruit, seeds and acorns. Listen for its song: one long, buzzy whistle, a pause, then another on a different pitch.

• Anna's hummingbird

  All winter · Western Oregon yards and towns

  Audubon describes Anna's as a permanent resident on the Pacific Coast that stays the winter where no other hummingbird does, and credits garden flowers and feeders with helping it spread north as far as British Columbia. A feeder left up for them needs fresh nectar every few days, and on frosty nights either bring it indoors or wrap it so the liquid stays thawed.

• Winter finches, or not

  Forecast for winter 2026–27 · Statewide

  The Finch Research Network's forecast, by Tyler Hoar, says little about the Pacific Northwest this year. It reports failed crops of ponderosa, whitebark, limber and pinyon pine across the interior West, which is sending red crossbills east, and good spruce crops only in a band from Alaska into British Columbia. It expects pine grosbeaks and Bohemian waxwings to remain in the boreal forest. Expect the usual winter mix rather than a flood, and pine siskins in whatever numbers they choose.

• Project FeederWatch begins

  November 1 to April 30 · Your yard, balcony or schoolyard

  The Cornell Lab's winter count works in pairs of back-to-back count days, repeated up to weekly; for each pair you write down, for every kind of bird, the biggest group that was in sight together. A season of counts from one yard shows exactly when your thrushes, juncos and siskins arrive and leave.

How wet is November in Oregon, and what will the El Niño winter bring?

• A record-strength El Niño, probably

  Building through the winter · Statewide

  NOAA's Climate Prediction Center, in its September 10 El Niño update, said the odds of a very strong El Niño over this rainy season topped 90 percent, and put the chance that it beats every event on record since 1950 by late fall at about 75 percent. Oregon's state climatologist, Larry O'Neill of Oregon State University, has said the event looks to be off the charts. In his reading, a typical El Niño leaves Oregon warm and dry, but the three strongest of recent decades left it slightly wetter than normal and very warm, with more atmospheric rivers and a high snow line, so more of the water fell as rain. After a winter he called the worst for snowpack in the state's records, a warm, rainy one would be a second hard year for the mountains.

• What to watch for in November

  All month · West of the Cascades especially

  El Niño's strongest effects usually come between December and February, so November weather may look ordinary. The federal December-to-February outlook lands on October 15; it will be posted with the Climate Prediction Center's three-month outlooks. For the storm due this week, check our local forecast page, and the cloud guide shows what the sky looks like as a front arrives.

Has your part of Oregon had its first freeze yet?

How much daylight does Oregon lose in November?

What can you see in the Oregon night sky this November?

• The Beaver Moon, a supermoon

  Evenings of Monday, November 23 and Tuesday, November 24 · Rising in the east-northeast at dusk

  The moon is exactly full early on Tuesday morning, so it rises round on both evenings. It is also one of 2026's supermoons, though a modest one: the moon is nearest Earth on the 25th, more than a day past full. Monday night's moon drifts across the Pleiades too, and the cluster's faint blue stars will struggle to show through that glare. December's full moon will be the nearer and larger of the two.

• The Leonids

  Best before dawn on Wednesday, November 18 · Look high in the east and south after midnight

  The International Meteor Organization expects a quiet year, a peak rate near 15 an hour for a perfectly dark sky, and puts the nominal maximum in the afternoon of the 17th by Pacific clocks. The radiant in Leo climbs above the eastern horizon around midnight, and the half-lit moon sets at about the same time, so the hours from 1 a.m. to the start of dawn on the 18th are the ones to try; the nights before and after are almost as good. The high desert's clear nights give it the edge over the cloudy west side.

• Taurid fireballs

  Southern peak November 5, northern November 12 · Overhead for much of the night

  The two Taurid streams are debris from Comet Encke. Expect a handful an hour, ten at most from the southern stream and five from the northern, yet now and then one drifts across as a slow, lingering fireball. Because the moon is new on the evening of the 8th, there is little moonlight to spoil the stretch between the two maxima.

• Venus, Jupiter and Mars before sunrise

  All month; Mars and Jupiter closest on the mornings of November 15 and 16 · East and southeast before dawn

  Venus, newly switched to the dawn side of the sun, gains altitude week by week as a dazzling white lamp over the east-southeast horizon; its peak brilliance falls around Thanksgiving week. On the 9th it passes within roughly one degree of Spica. Above it, in Leo, bright Jupiter and fainter, orange Mars draw together until barely more than a degree separates the pair, closest for Oregon viewers in the predawn of the 15th and 16th. Low in the brightening east between about the 18th and the 25th, Mercury makes a fourth.

• Saturn alone in the evening

  All month · South and southwest after dark

  The only bright planet after sunset is Saturn, a steady yellowish point in the southern sky. Uranus reaches opposition on the 25th near the Pleiades; in binoculars it is a small blue-green dot, but with the Beaver Moon next to it, wait until December for a try.

What can Oregon families do outside in November?

Safety notes for November in Oregon