December is deep into the Arkansas waterfowl season, when the Delta holds its winter peak of ducks and geese and bald eagles gather along the big rivers and lakes. The bare Ozark and Ouachita woods reveal every silhouette, and the long, clear nights bring the Geminid meteors and the brilliant winter constellations over the dark mountains.
Week by week in December
December 3–9
- Bald eagles gather to fish the open water at Holla Bend and the big lakes as the Christmas Bird Counts get underway.
- Orion's belt points down to brilliant Sirius and up to the Pleiades and reddish Aldebaran in Taurus.
- Prune dormant fruit trees and muscadines and harvest cold-sweetened greens under row cover in the south.
- Sweet potatoes and Arkansas pecans star at the holiday-season markets alongside winter squash and stored apples.
December 10–16
- The Geminid meteor shower, the richest of the year, peaks around December 14 and is good even before midnight from a dark sky.
- Wintering ducks and geese hold at their Delta peak; a frosty dawn over a flooded rice field is the year's best wildlife show.
- Bald cypress and water tupelo stand leafless and gray over the dark Cache River swamp water, their buttresses and knees exposed.
- Native witch-hazel may still hold a few yellow petal-ribbons in sheltered Ozark hollows.
December 17–23
- Mixed flocks of chickadees, titmice, nuthatches, and kinglets work the bare woods as waxwings strip the holly and cedar berries.
- The cold, dry air over the Buffalo National River dark-sky park gives crystalline views of the winter Milky Way through Orion.
- A month of rest and planning; order seeds early, clean and sharpen tools, and keep the feeders full.
- The flowering dogwood waits as a small understory tree, its flower buds already set for the spring to come.
December 24–31
- Mallards, snow geese, and gathered bald eagles hold at their winter peak across the Delta and the big rivers and lakes.
- Orion and the dazzling winter constellations dominate the long, dark nights at the close of the year.
- Rest and plan; keep mulch over the garlic and perennial crowns and leave standing seed heads to feed the winter birds.
- The bare sycamores glow white along the bottomlands while the loblolly pines hold south Arkansas green through the cold.
Birds This Month
December is the heart of Arkansas's wintering waterfowl season, and the eastern Delta is at its spectacular best. The flooded rice fields, green-tree reservoirs, and refuges around Stuttgart, Bald Knob, Wapanocca, and the Cache River hold enormous numbers of mallards — the king of Arkansas ducks — with northern pintail, gadwall, American wigeon, green-winged teal, and northern shovelers, while the Grand Prairie fields are blanketed with snow geese, greater white-fronted geese, and Ross's geese in swirling thousands.
Where the rivers and lakes stay open, bald eagles gather to fish — Holla Bend NWR on the Arkansas River, the big Corps lakes like Beaver, Bull Shoals, and Greers Ferry, and the dams reliably hold wintering eagles perched in the bare sycamores. The Christmas Bird Counts run this month, tallying the full winter community. The feeders and brushy edges are busy with white-throated, white-crowned, fox, and Harris's sparrows, dark-eyed juncos, Northern cardinals, and purple finches.
The woods hold mixed flocks of Carolina chickadees, titmice, nuthatches, kinglets, and woodpeckers, with wintering cedar waxwings and American robins stripping holly and cedar berries. At the western edge, a Greater Roadrunner may still dash across a winter fence line.
This month's tip: go to the Delta at first light for the duck and goose spectacle at its peak — dress for raw, wet cold — and visit a big lake or river dam for the gathered bald eagles. December offers the finest waterfowl and eagle viewing of the entire Arkansas year.
What's Blooming
December is the quietest wildflower month in Arkansas, with the ground dormant across the Ozark and Ouachita Highlands and the prairies brown and frosted. True flowers are essentially gone, though the native witch-hazel may still hold a few of its thin yellow petal-ribbons in sheltered Ozark hollows early in the month — the one true winter bloomer of the Highland woods.
The reward now is in structure, seed, and the beautiful tawny winter grasses. On the remnant Grand Prairie near Stuttgart and the Arkansas Valley glades, little bluestem glows deep russet-copper, big bluestem and Indian grass wave golden and bronze, and the dried seed heads of coneflower, blazing star, and ironweed stand stark against the winter sky, feeding goldfinches, juncos, and sparrows through the cold. The green rosettes of next spring's wildflowers wait flat against the warm dolomite of the glades.
Where to see it: this is a month to walk a prairie remnant or glade and read the dried architecture and glowing grasses in the low December light — recognizing the overwintering rosettes now tells you exactly where the spring bloom will return. The russet bluestem catching the slanting winter sun across a prairie is its own quiet beauty.
Garden This Month
December is the Arkansas gardener's rest, pruning, and planning month, though the mild state climate keeps the cool-season garden alive in the south. In central and south Arkansas, cold-hardy kale, collards, spinach, carrots, and turnips survive the winter under row cover or a cold frame, and the freezes only sweeten them — keep harvesting through the cold. Mulch garlic beds, strawberry rows, and perennial crowns heavily against the freeze-thaw heave that pushes shallow roots out of the ground.
With the woody plants dormant, this is the ideal time to prune apples, pears, peaches, blueberries, and muscadine grapes — the bare structure is easy to read and the plants will not bleed or stress. On a mild day you can still plant bare-root and dormant stock — fruit trees, blackberry canes, and roses settle in well over the gentle Arkansas winter. The rest of the month is for planning: order seeds before the popular varieties sell out, review what worked, clean and sharpen tools, turn the compost, and keep the bird feeders full and the standing seed heads in place to feed the wintering birds.
Zone 6b (upper Ozarks, Fayetteville and the northwest): the coldest corner is dormant under hard freezes. This is a planning and pruning month — order seeds early, prune dormant fruit trees and grapes on mild days, and keep mulch heaped over garlic, strawberry beds, and perennial crowns against the freeze-thaw heave common in the Highlands.
Zone 7a (Ozark and Ouachita valleys, Little Rock area): cold-hardy kale, collards, and spinach survive under row cover and a cold frame, sweetened by the freezes. Prune dormant fruit trees and muscadines, plant bare-root trees on mild days, and start planning next year's garden.
Zone 7b (south Arkansas and the lower Delta): the mild south still grows hardy greens, collards, and carrots with minimal protection. Plant bare-root fruit trees and roses, harvest cold-sweetened greens, and tuck in any last garlic — the gentle Delta winter keeps the cool-season garden alive.
What's at the Farmers Market
December markets in Arkansas lean on the storage harvest and the holiday table, dominated by the crops that keep. Sweet potatoes remain a star, perfect for the holiday season, and the Arkansas pecans are at their peak for the baking ahead. Winter squash like butternut and acorn, stored apples, and pumpkins carry on from the fall harvest.
The cold-hardy vegetables are at their sweetest now — frost-improved kale, collards, mustard, and turnip greens, plus cabbage, turnips, beets, and carrots — wherever growers run winter high tunnels and cold frames across central and south Arkansas. Stored onions, garlic, and the last cured winter squash round out the keeping crops, alongside local honey, sorghum, and milled Delta rice for the holiday cooking.
For selection and storage: keep sweet potatoes and winter squash in a warm, dry, dark place rather than the refrigerator, where cold harms sweet potatoes. Store pecans cold and sealed to keep the oils fresh, keep apples cold in the crisper, and store onions and garlic cool and dry but apart from the sweet potatoes. Keep the cold-sweetened greens crisp and dry in the refrigerator and use them within a few days.
Night Sky This Month
December has the longest nights of the Arkansas year, and the cold, dry air behind winter fronts makes it one of the best stargazing months — full dark arrives by early evening, so you do not have to stay up late. The state's dark-sky destinations are at their crisp best now: the Buffalo National River International Dark Sky Park in the Ozarks, the high overlook at Mount Magazine State Park, and the dark Ouachita National Forest, all far from city glow.
The brilliant winter constellations command the sky. Orion the Hunter dominates the southeast, his three-star belt pointing down to Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky, and up to reddish Aldebaran and the Pleiades cluster in Taurus. Orange Betelgeuse and blue-white Rigel mark Orion's shoulder and knee, and the faint winter Milky Way arches overhead through Orion and Gemini on a truly clear night.
The Geminid meteor shower, the richest and most reliable shower of the year, peaks around December 14, capable of producing dozens of bright, slow meteors per hour from a dark, moonless sky. The Geminids radiate from near the twin stars of Gemini, high overhead by late evening, and unlike most showers they are good even before midnight. Because the exact Geminid peak and the planets' positions shift each year, check the printable Arkansas night-sky guide for this year's specific viewing nights and planet visibility from your latitude.
Butterflies & Pollinators
December is the quietest butterfly month in Arkansas, and on a typical cold day you will see none on the wing. The season is fully paused — Arkansas's butterflies are overwintering as eggs, caterpillars, chrysalises, or hidden adults tucked into bark, brush piles, hollow logs, and leaf litter, waiting out the cold for the warmth of late winter.
A few species pass the Arkansas winter as adults in hiding, and these offer the only slim chance of a December sighting. The mourning cloak, question mark, and eastern comma shelter behind loose bark and in woodpiles in the Highlands, and in the mild south an unusually warm, sunny December afternoon could coax out a goatweed leafwing — but such days are rare. The monarchs that streamed south through Arkansas in fall are now clustered far away in the Mexican overwintering forests.
To support them now: December is for planning and for leaving the winter garden alone. Resist clearing every bed — the leaf litter, brush piles, standing stems, and rough bark are exactly where Arkansas's butterflies shelter as eggs, chrysalises, and hidden adults. Use the quiet to plan next year's plantings: native milkweed for monarchs, pawpaw for zebra swallowtails, native passionflower for Gulf fritillaries, and a long succession of nectar for the season ahead.
What to plant for them is in the Arkansas native plants guide
Trees This Month
December reveals the bones of the Arkansas tree world, with the contrast between the state's regions at its sharpest. The hardwoods are bare, and that bareness is the point — in the leafless Ozark and Ouachita woods you can read the architecture of the great white oak, shagbark hickory with its peeling plates, and bottomland sycamore, whose white, flaking upper bark glows against the gray winter woods. The last stubborn oak leaves rattle on the lower branches.
The green in a December Arkansas landscape comes from the pines and cedars. The native shortleaf pine covers the Ouachita ridges, and the great plantations and stands of the state tree, the loblolly pine, blanket south Arkansas's timber country dark green all winter. Dense eastern red cedar holds the glades and fencerows, its blue berry-like cones feeding the wintering waxwings and bluebirds, and the American holly brightens the woods with red berries. Down in the Delta and along the Cache River, the bald cypress and water tupelo stand leafless and gray over the dark swamp water, their flared buttresses and knees fully exposed. The flowering dogwood waits as a small understory tree, its flower buds already set for the spring to come.
The Arkansas native plants guide covers what grows with them
Weather & Daylight
Across Arkansas, a typical December day averages a high near 52°F and a low near 33°F, with about 4.8 inches of precipitation — statewide averages from the 1991–2020 U.S. climate normals.
Winter settles in with chilly 52-degree days and cold 33-degree nights, the year's wettest month wrapping everything in damp gray.
| Average high | 52°F |
|---|---|
| Average low | 33°F |
| Precipitation | 4.8 in |
| Sunrise (mid-month) | 7:10 CT |
| Sunset (mid-month) | 16:59 CT |
Figures are statewide averages over the 1991–2020 U.S. climate normals; local conditions vary with elevation and distance from the coast. Sunrise and sunset are computed for a midstate point on the 15th (CT).
Next month's version of this page, by email
One short note when Arkansas's next month turns — what's arriving, blooming, and worth a night outside.
Go deeper with the Arkansas guides
The complete Arkansas birding, native-plant, and night-sky references — or the whole year, week by week, in one book.
Same month elsewhere: December in California · December in Colorado · December in Connecticut