What to look for in nature in Vermont this December

When is the Christmas Bird Count in Vermont in 2026, and how do you join?

• More than twenty circles

  One day per circle, between December 14 and January 5 · Statewide, from Island Pond and Barnet to Bennington, Brattleboro and the Champlain Islands

  A 2018 Vermont Center for Ecostudies list named 23 count circles touching the state, among them Burlington, Ferrisburgh, Middlebury, Hinesburg–Huntington, Mt. Abraham, Rutland, Woodstock, Springfield, Saxtons River, Winhall–Windham, Lamoille County, Hunger Mountain, Island Pond, Barnet, East Franklin County and the Champlain Islands–St. Albans. Some circles straddle a border: Hanover–Norwich takes in the Upper Valley, and the Plattsburgh count reaches across the lake. Audubon’s circle map shows each one and whether it still needs help; email the compiler well before count day.

• Montpelier–Plainfield, December 19

  Saturday, December 19, 2026 · Plainfield, Montpelier, East Montpelier, Calais, Orange, Barre and Marshfield

  North Branch Nature Center has already posted its date. The center calls this one of the oldest circles in the state, counted every year since 1960, and invites new counters to sign up with its staff. Residents inside the circle can also report the birds at their own feeders that day.

• What a count finds

  Results posted in January · Brattleboro, Woodstock and every other circle

  Last year’s Brattleboro count, on December 20, 2025, found 4,324 birds of 52 species, Southeastern Vermont Audubon reported, including the count’s first eastern phoebe. Decades of these lists show change: a Vermont Center for Ecostudies biologist has pointed out that northern cardinals were absent from Vermont before the 1970s, and that red-bellied woodpeckers and Carolina wrens are also recent arrivals.

Where can you see snowy owls and bald eagles in Vermont in winter?

• Snowy owls in the Addison flats

  In irruption years, from mid-November through the winter · Open farmland around Addison and Shoreham; also the Colchester Causeway and the islands

  These white owls nest on the tundra and reach Vermont in good numbers only some years. The Vermont Center for Ecostudies explains that big flights tend to follow a lemming boom: plenty of young owls survive, and adults drive them out of their territories. In Vermont the broad, flat fields of Addison County are the most reliable place to find them, and the center has also noted birds on the Colchester Causeway. Whether 2026–27 is a big year will show up in eBird’s Vermont reports. If you find one, watch from the car and keep your distance; a snowy owl flushed again and again wastes energy it needs.

• Bald eagles at open water

  Most visible from December into early spring · The Connecticut River, Lake Champlain and its bays, Lake Memphremagog

  The Lake Champlain Committee notes that eagle sightings around the lake peak in winter and early spring, when birds from places where the water has frozen gather wherever they can still catch fish. Vermont’s own population has come back too. The state’s first nesting pair raised young in 2008, the bald eagle came off Vermont’s endangered list on February 10, 2022, and VTDigger reported 38 nesting pairs in 2025, most of them along the Connecticut River. Scan the edges of ice shelves and tall riverside trees below dams, where the current keeps the water open longest.

• Great horned owls start to duet

  Late December into January · Woodlots next to farm fields, especially in the Champlain Lowlands

  Few birds in Vermont nest earlier than the great horned owl. Northern Woodlands describes pairs calling back and forth by early January, the female’s voice higher than the male’s, and the Vermont Breeding Bird Atlas found that 40 percent of the state’s records of the species came from the Champlain Lowlands, where pine woods for roosting sit beside open land for hunting. On a still, cold night near the solstice, step outside after dark and listen for a deep, soft series of hoots answered by a slightly higher voice.

When can you put bird feeders up in Vermont, and which birds will come?

• The regulars

  From the first day you fill the feeder · Backyards statewide

  Chickadees tend to discover a freshly filled feeder before anything else, then come tufted titmice, white-breasted and red-breasted nuthatches, downy and hairy woodpeckers, blue jays, juncos and, in much of the state, northern cardinals. Black-oil sunflower seed draws the widest mix, the department says, and a suet cake will keep the woodpeckers coming in a cold snap.

• Winter finches

  Unpredictable; best from December into March · Feeders near conifers; also the woods

  The Finch Research Network’s fall forecast expected pine siskins and red crossbills in good numbers across the Northeast this winter, along with some purple finches, but only small numbers of evening grosbeaks and redpolls. With a heavy white pine and cedar cone crop in the woods, many finches may stay out in the forest rather than at the feeder, at least early in the season.

• Bears, windows and cats

  All winter · Your yard

  The department warns that bears sometimes wake and wander during a winter thaw, so take feeders in if one appears. To cut window strikes, place feeders within 3 feet of the glass or more than 30 feet away, keep cats indoors, and scrub feeders every couple of weeks with a 10 percent bleach solution and let them dry completely before you refill.

How do you tell Vermont’s evergreen trees apart in winter?

• Balsam fir

  All year; the classic Christmas tree · Cool forests, swamp edges and high slopes, especially in the Northeast Kingdom and the mountains

  Fir needles are flat, so you cannot roll one between finger and thumb, and they are whitish underneath. The smooth young bark carries blisters full of resin, and crushing a twig releases the sweet balsam smell. Its cones sit upright near the crown and come apart in place.

• Red spruce

  All year · Higher slopes and cold hollows; the dark band below the summits of the Green Mountains

  Spruce needles are four-sided and roll easily between your fingers; they are also sharp. Go Botany says red spruce twigs are finely hairy, which separates it from white spruce, and that it favors the cool, moist air of higher elevations and frost pockets. Its cones hang down and drop whole.

• Eastern hemlock

  All year · Shady ravines, stream banks and north-facing slopes

  Hemlock needles are short and flat, each on a tiny stalk, with two pale lines beneath, and the small egg-shaped cones dangle from the tips of the twigs. In southern Vermont, look at the undersides of hemlock twigs for tiny tufts of white wool: that is the hemlock woolly adelgid, an invasive insect that has been concentrated in Windham County with spots in southern Windsor and Bennington counties. The tufts show best from November to May, which makes winter the time to look, and the state’s forest health staff ask people to report any they find outside the known area.

• Eastern white pine

  All year · Old fields, ridges and village edges statewide

  The easy one: soft, long needles in bundles of five. This year’s heavy cone crop is feeding the crossbills and siskins.

How do Vermont’s animals survive the winter?

• Bats in a Dorset cave

  Hibernating from fall to about mid-April · Caves and old mines; Aeolus Cave in Dorset, owned by The Nature Conservancy and gated

  Six of Vermont’s nine bat species spend the winter hanging in caves and mines. The most famous is Aeolus Cave, high on a Dorset mountainside, where biologists in the 1960s estimated a quarter of a million bats hibernated each winter. Then came white-nose syndrome, a fungal disease first seen in the Northeast in 2006, which Vermont Fish & Wildlife says has killed more than 5.7 million bats in the region and cut the state’s cave bat populations by more than 90 percent; the little brown bat is now state endangered.

• Wood frogs, frozen in the leaves

  From the first hard freezes until spring · Just under the leaf litter in hardwood forests

  Most of our frogs spend the winter in pond-bottom mud, but the wood frog stays on land, tucked a couple of inches under the dead leaves, and simply freezes. Northern Woodlands explains that as ice starts to form, the frog turns its stored glycogen into glucose, raising its blood sugar as much as 200-fold, and that sugar keeps the inside of its cells from freezing while up to 65 percent of its body water turns to ice between them. When spring rains come, the frogs thaw and head for the vernal pools to breed.

• Chipmunks and their pantries

  Mostly underground from late fall to early spring · Burrows along stone walls, woodpiles and forest edges

  Eastern chipmunks do not fatten up the way bears do. Instead they fill an underground larder with nuts and seeds, and Northern Woodlands notes that sleeping chipmunks wake from time to time to eat from it, and may even pop out on a mild winter day.

• Fisher, fox and hare: the ones still out

  All winter, best the morning after a light snow · Conifer and mixed forests, stone walls, stream edges

  Vermont Fish & Wildlife says fishers now live in virtually every town in the state, favoring conifer and mixed woods where the canopy keeps the snow shallow; they are one of the few predators that regularly kill porcupines. In fresh snow, look for the fisher’s paired bounding prints along logs and stone walls.

How much snow does Vermont usually get in December?

• The Mount Mansfield snow stake

  Read every day since November 1954 · Near the summit of Mount Mansfield, Stowe

  Snow depth at a stake near the top of Vermont’s highest mountain has been measured daily since November 1954 at a National Weather Service cooperative station, and the University of Vermont’s Forest Ecosystem Monitoring Cooperative archives the record. WCAX reported that the average depth there on December 4 is just 17 inches, and that the stake typically does not reach 50 inches until late January. Last winter broke the rules: the stake hit 50 inches in the first week of December 2025, the earliest on record, and VTDigger reported 63 inches by mid-month, against a normal of about 22.

• Lake Champlain stays open

  Bays may skim with ice in late December; the broad lake almost never freezes before late January · Shallow, sheltered bays first; the broad main lake last

  The National Weather Service office in Burlington keeps a list of the dates the lake “closed,” meaning ice reached across the broad lake from Burlington to Port Kent, New York, going back to 1816. There is no December closing on it. The earliest recorded was January 7, 1868; most closings fall from mid-January to mid-February, and in many recent winters the lake has not closed at all. It closed on February 13, 2026, the first time since 2019.

Will a strong El Niño mean a mild, low-snow winter in Vermont?

When is the earliest sunset in Vermont, and when do the days start getting longer?

What can you see in Vermont’s night sky in December 2026?

• Venus and the crescent moon at dawn

  Mornings of December 4 and 5, and all month · Southeast before sunrise

  Venus is the dazzling light in the southeast before dawn all month, far brighter than any star. The old crescent moon drifts past it on December 4 and 5, with the star Spica close to the moon on the 4th. Jupiter and Mars are also up before dawn, Jupiter bright and high, Mars smaller and orange.

• The Geminids

  Night of Sunday, December 13, into Monday the 14th; active December 4 to 20 · Anywhere dark; the radiant near Castor and Pollux is high after midnight

  The International Meteor Organization gives an ideal-sky peak rate near 150 per hour, and in 2026 the young crescent moon sets in the mid-evening and leaves the hours after that moonless. A backyard observer sees far fewer, yet a dark field in the hills can deliver several dozen an hour, most of all near 2 a.m. Wear every layer you own, lie on a foam pad, and keep phone screens off.

• Saturn in the evening, a gibbous moon at the Pleiades

  Evenings all month; the moon near the Pleiades on December 21 · South and southwest after dusk

  Saturn, steady and pale gold, is the lone bright planet of the early evening. On December 21, shortly after dark, the fat gibbous moon sits beside the Pleiades in the east.

• The Cold Moon, the closest full moon of 2026

  Full at 8:28 p.m. on Wednesday, December 23; nearly full on Christmas Eve · Rising in the northeast around sunset

  Seven hours or so after the full phase, the moon reaches perigee, its nearest point this month. EarthSky calls it the closest full supermoon of the year, and the BBC’s Sky at Night magazine lists it as the third and last supermoon of 2026. On a snowy night it lights the fields well enough to read tracks without a flashlight. The Ursid meteors peak the night before, but under that bright moon they will be hard to see.

What can Vermont families do outdoors in December 2026?

Safety notes for December in Vermont