Vermont Nature Guide: December 2026
December brings winter in earnest to Vermont — snow blanketing the Green Mountains, the lakes freezing, and the shortest days of the year. The Christmas Bird Counts get underway, the feeders fill, and the long, dark nights offer some of the best stargazing of the year over a hushed white landscape.
What to look for this week
- Feeders are at their winter peak — black-capped chickadees, nuthatches, and cardinals work the seed, while redpolls and pine siskins may arrive in a northern-finch irruption year.
- The Quadrantid meteor shower peaks in a short, sharp burst around January 3; watch the northeast after midnight from a dark Vermont ridge away from town lights.
- A planning week — order seeds early, especially the short-season varieties Northeast Kingdom gardens depend on, before they sell out.
Birds This Month
December settles Vermont into its winter bird community, and it's Christmas Bird Count season — the long-running citizen-science counts run across the state from mid-December into early January, tallying the hardy birds that stay. Feeders are the center of it all: black-capped chickadees, white-breasted and red-breasted nuthatches, tufted titmice, downy and hairy woodpeckers, northern cardinals, and blue jays, with dark-eyed juncos and American tree sparrows beneath.
In an irruption year, common redpolls, pine siskins, evening and pine grosbeaks, and crossbills arrive from the north. Bald eagles gather on the open water of Lake Champlain and the rivers below dams as the smaller waters freeze, and the Champlain Valley's open fields may hold snowy owls, rough-legged hawks, snow buntings, and horned larks. Great horned owls begin their winter courtship hooting at dusk.
This month's tip: join or start a Christmas Bird Count, and keep feeders full and snow-free through the cold snaps — and add suet and open water, which together bring the most winter species to a Vermont yard.
What's Blooming
Nothing blooms outdoors in a Vermont December — the ground is frozen and the snow lies over the dormant landscape. The natural color is in the conifers and the bright structure that persists through the cold: the crimson stems of red-osier dogwood, the orange-red berries of winterberry holly and highbush cranberry glowing against the snow, the rusty seed clusters of staghorn sumac, and the tan, sculptural seed heads of goldenrod, aster, and grass standing in the drifts — all of it feeding the wintering birds.
This is the season of holiday greenery, deeply tied to Vermont's woods: balsam fir Christmas trees and wreaths (a major Vermont crop), white pine and spruce boughs, and the bright berries of winterberry in arrangements. Indoors, the windowsills fill with amaryllis, forced paperwhites, poinsettias, and Christmas cactus, and the long dark nights turn gardeners toward the seed catalogs and the dreaming of next year's beds.
Garden This Month
December gardening in Vermont is winter-protection and planning. Outdoors, the work is defensive: make sure perennial beds, bulbs, strawberries, and tender plants are mulched once the ground has frozen, guard young tree trunks from gnawing voles, mice, and browsing deer (the winter's worst threat to fruit trees), and gently brush heavy, wet snow off arborvitae, evergreens, and shrubs to prevent breakage — but leave dry, fluffy snow as insulation over the beds.
Mostly, though, December is for planning and rest. Take stock of what worked and what didn't, sketch next year's garden, inventory leftover seeds, and start ordering the new ones — short-season varieties for the cold zones sell out early. Clean, sharpen, and oil tools, and care for overwintering houseplants and any stored bulbs, dahlia tubers, and geraniums. The Vermont garden sleeps deeply now under the snow, and so, gratefully, does the gardener.
Zone 3b (Northeast Kingdom & high country): the garden is fully dormant under deep snow — the best insulation it gets. Leave drifts banked over perennials, knock heavy snow off evergreens, protect young trees from deer and rodents, and turn to planning and seed-ordering for the year ahead.
Zone 4b (central Vermont & valleys): nothing to do outdoors but protect — make sure perennials and bulbs are mulched, guard young bark from rodents and deer, and brush heavy snow off shrubs. Indoors, take inventory, sharpen tools, and start the seed list.
What's at the Farmers Market
December markets are winter markets and holiday markets, indoors and lively. The produce is all storage crops: potatoes, onions, garlic, carrots, beets, parsnips, turnips, celeriac, winter squash, cabbage, and frost-sweetened Brussels sprouts and hardy greens from cold frames and root cellars, plus cold-storage apples and fresh cider.
The holiday season makes this a peak month for Vermont's signature keeping foods: cheese (the farmstead cheddars are classic gifts), maple syrup and confections, honey, preserves, and grass-fed and pasture-raised meats. Vermont's Christmas trees, wreaths, and balsam greenery — a major crop — fill the stands with their fragrance. Stock the winter pantry now: keep roots cool, dark, and humid, squash and onions cool and dry, and cabbage cold; wrap cheese in waxed paper rather than plastic; and store syrup sealed and refrigerated once opened. These are the flavors that carry a Vermont household through the long winter ahead.
Night Sky This Month
December brings the winter solstice around the 21st — the longest night of the year — and with it some of Vermont's finest stargazing, the cold, dry air exceptionally clear over the snow. The brilliant winter sky is in full glory: Orion climbs the southeast with the glowing Orion Nebula in his sword, Taurus and the Pleiades ride high, and the great Winter Hexagon of first-magnitude stars — Sirius, Capella, Aldebaran, Rigel, Procyon, and Pollux — sprawls across the sky.
The Geminid meteor shower peaks around December 14, one of the best and most reliable showers of the entire year, sending dozens of bright, slow meteors an hour from radiant Gemini, visible all night and excellent from a dark site. Bundle up — Vermont's dark rural skies and the Northeast Kingdom make it spectacular. The long nights also favor catching the aurora borealis on the northern horizon.
For this year's exact Geminid peak, moon phase, and planet positions, see the printable Vermont night-sky guide for your part of the state.
Butterflies & Pollinators
There are no butterflies flying in a Vermont December — the deep cold and snow have shut the season down entirely. Every one of the state's butterflies is locked into its overwintering form, scattered and dormant across the frozen landscape. Monarchs are far to the south, clustered by the millions in the oyamel fir forests of central Mexico, where they will wait out the winter before beginning the journey that, generations later, brings their descendants back to Vermont's milkweed in spring. The species that winter here endure in place: mourning cloaks and eastern commas as adults tucked behind bark and in woodpiles, protected by natural antifreeze; the swallowtails and many others as chrysalises; the fritillaries as tiny caterpillars in the leaf litter; and still others as eggs glued to host plants. This is purely a planning month — sketch a sunny bed of native milkweed, asters, and joe-pye weed for the year ahead, when the first mourning cloak will fly again in April.
Trees This Month
December's Vermont trees are fully dormant under the snow, and the conifers define the winter woods. The state's beloved balsam fir — the classic Christmas tree, harvested by the thousands from Vermont farms — holds its fragrant dark green alongside red and white spruce, white pine, and eastern hemlock, the only green on the white-and-gray hillsides. Their boughs catch the snow and shelter the wintering birds.
The bare hardwoods stand stark and sculptural: the smooth gray American beech still clinging to its pale marcescent leaves, the white paper and golden yellow birches, and the broad roadside sugar maples waiting, sap frozen, for the March thaw that will start the cycle again. Ice and wet snow load the branches, and the woods are silent but for the wind and the occasional woodpecker. Deep underground and within the sealed buds, the year's growth waits — dormant, patient, and ready for the light's slow return after the solstice.
Go deeper with the Vermont guides
The complete Vermont birding, native-plant, wildflower, and night-sky guides — or the whole year in one bundle.
Same month elsewhere: December in Virginia · December in Washington · December in West Virginia