Florida Nature Guide: December 2026
December is the mild heart of Florida's dry winter — the Christmas Bird Counts tally crowds of wintering ducks and warblers, manatees pack the warm springs, and the citrus hangs ripe in the groves. The cool-season vegetable garden is in full production, and the long, crisp, dark nights bring the brilliant winter constellations to the wide Florida sky.
What to look for this week
- The Christmas Bird Count season peaks across Florida, with Merritt Island and the Everglades tallying huge numbers of wintering ducks, spoonbills, and wood storks.
- The Quadrantid meteor shower peaks in a brief, sharp burst around January 3 — best after midnight from the dark Kissimmee Prairie or Big Cypress.
- The cool-season vegetable garden is in full production statewide; harvest broccoli, collards, and lettuce, and keep frost cloth ready in the north.
Birds This Month
December is peak winter birding in Florida, and the month of the famous Christmas Bird Counts, when the state's mild weather and huge concentrations of birds produce some of the highest species totals in the country. At Merritt Island NWR, the marshes brim with wintering Northern Pintail, American Wigeon, Northern Shoveler, teal, scaup, Redhead, and Ring-necked Duck, mixed with Roseate Spoonbills, Wood Storks, Reddish Egrets, and clouds of ibis and herons. In Everglades National Park, the dry-down concentrates fish and birds along the Anhinga Trail, with Wood Storks, Anhingas, Purple Gallinules, and alligators at the shrinking pools.
The wintering songbirds fill the hammocks and feeders — Yellow-rumped (Myrtle), Palm, and Pine Warblers, Gray Catbirds, House Wrens, American Robins, Cedar Waxwings, and sparrows — and Painted Buntings brighten south Florida feeders. The endemic Florida Scrub-Jay caches acorns in the scrub, the Snail Kite and Limpkin work the central marshes, wintering Bald Eagles are nesting, and the manatees crowd the warm springs at Blue Spring, Crystal River, and the power-plant outfalls as the Gulf cools. Resident Northern Mockingbirds, the state bird, sing through the mild winter days.
What's Blooming
December keeps far more color in Florida than the calendar would suggest, as the mild dry season holds bloom along the roadsides and in the hammocks while the rest of the country is bare. The hardy Spanish needles (Bidens alba) flowers on every disturbed edge, feeding the winter butterflies, and the last blanketflower, goldenaster, and climbing aster linger in the flatwoods. The structural seedheads of blazing star and goldenrod stand through the prairies.
South Florida's dry season is the showy time — firebush, necklacepod, lantana, beach sunflower, scorpionstail, and railroad vine keep nectar flowing in the coastal and hammock gardens, and the frost-free tropicals hibiscus, bougainvillea, powderpuff, and shrimp plant bloom on. The native coontie cycad holds its bright orange seed cones in the southeast hammocks, and the dahoon and American holly carry brilliant red berries through the woods. In central and south Florida gardens, the first orange blossoms can open on the reblooming citrus, and cool-season annuals — pansies, snapdragons, petunias, and geraniums — fill the winter beds in their Florida prime.
Garden This Month
December is a peak production month in the Florida vegetable garden — its inverted calendar makes the mild, dry winter the heart of the growing season while northern gardens lie under snow. The cool-season garden is in full swing across the state: harvest broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, collards, kale, lettuce, spinach, carrots, beets, radishes, turnips, and English peas, and keep sowing successive plantings of greens, lettuce, and root crops in the warm soil. In central and south Florida, frost-tender tomatoes, peppers, and beans keep producing through the mild weather.
Frost protection is the watchword in north and central Florida, where hard December freezes can arrive — keep frost cloth or sheets ready, water beds before a cold night, and cover or wrap young citrus, papaya, and tropical ornamentals when the temperature threatens. The central-Florida strawberry beds around Plant City come into production now, and the pest and disease pressure stays low in the dry air. This is an excellent time to plant bare-root and container deciduous fruit trees, blueberries, citrus, and roses while dormant, and to set out cool-season flowers and herbs. It is the start of Florida's finest gardening stretch, the calm green winter while the country freezes.
Zone 10a (south-central Florida & lower east coast): the dry-season garden thrives with little frost worry. Keep harvesting and planting tomatoes, peppers, beans, and greens, sow more lettuce and root crops, and enjoy the peak of the growing season.
Zone 11a (the Florida Keys & deep south coast): frost-free and at its best. Grow tropical vegetables and herbs, plant tomatoes, peppers, beans, and greens for the dry-season harvest, and water regularly as the dry trade winds parch the thin soils.
Zone 9a (north-central Florida): the cool-season garden is in full production but hard freezes can strike. Harvest broccoli, cabbage, collards, and greens, keep frost cloth ready, water beds before cold nights, and protect tender citrus and tropicals when the temperature drops.
What's at the Farmers Market
December markets are at their richest as Florida's winter season peaks. Citrus defines the month — navel and 'Hamlin' oranges, grapefruit, tangerines, satsumas, and honeybells (Minneola tangelos) from the central and Indian River groves are at their juicy best, the classic Florida holiday fruit shipped nationwide. Choose citrus that feels heavy for its size with firm skin; surface blemishes do not affect the sweetness inside. Central-Florida strawberries from the Plant City fields begin their long winter season.
The winter vegetable fields pour out tomatoes, bell peppers, snap beans, sweet corn, cucumbers, squash, cabbage, collards, lettuce, and greens from the southern and east-coast growing regions, alongside cool-season broccoli, cauliflower, and root crops. Look too for new-crop sugarcane, boiled peanuts, central-Florida blueberries in the warmest spots, and Florida honey and cane syrup at the markets. Refrigerate the berries unwashed in a single layer, keep the tomatoes at room temperature for flavor, store the citrus cool for weeks of keeping, and hold the greens and beans cool and humid in the crisper.
Night Sky This Month
December's long, crisp, dry nights bring some of the very best stargazing of the Florida year, with the brilliant winter sky returning to the wide, flat horizon. Kissimmee Prairie Preserve State Park, Florida's first certified International Dark Sky Park, holds winter star parties on its vast unlit prairie, and Big Cypress National Preserve and the Everglades back roads offer the other great dark-sky escapes from the Orlando, Tampa, and Miami glow. The cool, dry, steady air gives transparent skies, and the southern stars climb higher here than across most of the country.
The winter showpieces dominate: Orion strides up the southeast with the Orion Nebula glowing in his sword, his belt pointing down to dazzling Sirius, the sky's brightest star, and the great Winter Hexagon and the Pleiades blaze overhead. The Geminid meteor shower, the richest of the year, peaks around December 14, sending bright, slow meteors across the sky all night — best from a dark prairie or Everglades site — and the Ursids add a modest shower near the solstice on December 21, the longest night. The printable Florida night-sky guide lists this year's exact meteor-peak dates, planet positions, and dark-sky sites for your region.
Butterflies & Pollinators
December keeps Florida among the only places in the continental United States with genuine winter butterfly activity, especially in the frost-free central and southern peninsula. The state butterfly, the zebra longwing, floats slowly through shaded hammock edges and gardens on warm afternoons and gathers at its communal night roosts, and the gulf fritillary works passionflower and lantana. Cloudless sulphurs, white peacocks, common buckeyes, long-tailed skippers, the coastal great southern whites, and the big giant and palamedes swallowtails stay on the wing on mild days in the south.
The non-migratory south Florida monarchs and the resident queens keep breeding on milkweed through the mild winter, so caterpillars and fresh adults persist in December gardens, and the southeast-coast hammocks hold their year-round atala hairstreaks on coontie. The south Florida tropical specialties — ruddy daggerwing, julia, mangrove buckeye — linger in the warm hammocks. In the cooler north and Panhandle, fewer species fly, but a warm December day still brings out sulphurs and buckeyes nectaring on the persistent Spanish needles and firebush. Leaving milkweed, host plants, and leaf litter undisturbed keeps the winter butterflies fed through the dry season.
Trees This Month
December is an evergreen month in Florida, with the state's signature trees holding their leaves through the mild winter while a few deciduous species stand bare. The live oaks, draped in Spanish moss and resurrection fern, keep their dark crowns; southern magnolia, cabbage (sabal) palm — the state tree — and the saw palmetto understory stay green; and along the south coast the dark canopies of red, black, and white mangrove hold the estuaries. The pine flatwoods and Panhandle sandhills carry their evergreen longleaf, slash, and loblolly pines.
The deciduous exceptions complete their show: the bald cypress of Corkscrew, Big Cypress, and the blackwater rivers drop the last russet needles to stand bare and gray over the dark water, and the swamp red maple, black gum, and sweetgum finish their fall color. The fruiting dahoon and American holly glow with red berries through the woods, feeding the wintering robins and waxwings, and the sabal palm holds its black fruit. In south Florida, the gumbo-limbo stands briefly bare while the mangroves and tropical hammocks hold green. The citrus groves, by contrast, hang heavy with ripe fruit — the brightest color in the Florida winter landscape.
Go deeper with the Florida guides
The complete Florida birding, native-plant, wildflower, and night-sky guides — or the whole year in one bundle.
Same month elsewhere: December in Georgia · December in Idaho · December in Illinois