Washington Nature Guide: December 2026
December is the wet, dark heart of the Washington winter on the westside and a frozen, snowy one in the mountains and east — yet the Skagit eagles, swans, and Snow Geese are at their peak, the Christmas Bird Counts fill the calendar, and the long nights bring the year's best winter stargazing east of the Cascades.
What to look for this week
- The Skagit flats roar with tens of thousands of wintering Snow Geese, Trumpeter and Tundra Swans, and Bald Eagles line the rivers below the salmon spawn.
- The Quadrantid meteor shower peaks in a brief, sharp burst around January 3 — watch the dark northeast after midnight from the dry country east of the Cascades.
- In the mild Puget lowland, keep harvesting overwintered kale, leeks, and parsnips between rains, and prune dormant apples and roses on a dry day.
- Western hemlock, redcedar, and Douglas-fir carry the gray westside landscape, their trunks furred with moss in the wettest weeks of the year.
Birds This Month
December is prime time for Washington's winter spectacles and the season of Christmas Bird Counts statewide. The Skagit and Stillaguamish flats hold their full force of Snow Geese, Trumpeter and Tundra Swans, and Cackling Geese, while the Bald Eagle gathering along the upper Skagit near Rockport peaks now as the birds feast on spawned chum salmon. Raptors work the open ground — Rough-legged Hawks, Northern Harriers, the famous Short-eared Owls on the Samish flats, and wintering Gyrfalcon or Snowy Owl.
The Salish Sea is full of wintering sea ducks and alcids — scoters, Long-tailed Ducks, Barrow's Goldeneye, Harlequin Ducks, Common Murres, and loons and grebes. Westside feeders peak with Black-capped and Chestnut-backed Chickadees, juncos, Varied Thrushes, Spotted Towhees, Golden-crowned Sparrows, and overwintering Anna's Hummingbirds at the feeders, with possible finch irruptions from the north.
What's Blooming
December's bloom is the quiet, winter-flowering edge that the mild Puget lowland uniquely allows. In sheltered gardens, winter heath, hellebores (the "Christmas rose"), fragrant sweet box, witch hazel, winter jasmine, and the earliest snowdrops open against the gray, and Viburnum bodnantense scents the cold air. The native landscape stays green and living through the wet winter where most of the country lies frozen.
What carries the wild winter is evergreen foliage and fruit: salal, Oregon grape, sword and licorice fern, deep moss on every trunk, and the bright berries that feed wintering flocks — scarlet rose hips, orange-red Pacific madrone and mountain ash berries, blue Oregon grape, and white snowberry. East of the Cascades, the shrub-steppe lies brown and frozen under snow, sagebrush and rabbitbrush fully dormant.
Garden This Month
December is the quietest garden month, but the mild westside never fully stops. Between the rains, keep harvesting overwintered kale, chard, leeks, parsnips, and Brussels sprouts, all sweetened by frost. On a dry, calm day, begin dormant pruning of apples, pears, and roses and apply dormant oil. Protect broadleaf evergreens like rhododendron and camellia from drying wind, and keep mulch over tender perennials. Cut holly, ivy, and conifer boughs for the holidays.
This is also the armchair-planning month: pore over the seed catalogs and order early, especially short-season varieties for the east side and the regionally adapted favorites, before they sell out. East of the Cascades, the garden is frozen and snow-covered, so the work is purely planning and protection — let the snowpack insulate the beds and knock heavy snow off shrubs before it breaks them.
Zone 5b (eastern valleys & mountains): deep winter, frozen and snow-covered. Let the snowpack insulate the perennial beds, keep heavy snow knocked off arborvitae and fruit branches, and order seed for the short eastern season.
Zone 7b (Puget lowland & coastal valleys): even now you can harvest overwintered kale, leeks, parsnips, and Brussels sprouts between rains. Prune dormant fruit trees and roses on a dry day, protect broadleaf evergreens from wind, and start dreaming over the seed catalogs.
Zone 8a (Puget Sound shore & San Juan Islands): the mildest gardens keep yielding greens and roots through the winter. Mulch against the occasional hard frost, cut greens and conifer boughs for the holidays, and plan next year's beds.
What's at the Farmers Market
December markets — now indoor winter markets in Olympia, Ballard, Spokane, and beyond — run on the harvest larder and the cold-water sea. Washington apples and pears from controlled-atmosphere storage are crisp and abundant for the holidays — Cosmic Crisp, Honeycrisp, Fuji, Anjou — alongside winter squash, potatoes, carrots, beets, parsnips, celeriac, leeks, cabbage, and Brussels sprouts on the stalk. Coastal cranberries, hazelnuts, and chestnuts round out the holiday table.
This is the heart of Dungeness crab season on the Salish Sea, a Northwest holiday tradition, and Pacific oysters from Willapa Bay and Hood Canal are at their plump, cold-water best. Heated hoop houses keep up fresh spinach, kale, and mâche. Choose firm, heavy apples and store them cold; keep crab and oysters iced, tightly closed, and use them promptly; store winter squash and roots cool, dark, and dry to last the season.
Night Sky This Month
December gives Washington its longest, darkest nights and, east of the Cascades, the cold, dry, transparent air that makes the year's finest stargazing. The dark-sky destinations are Goldendale Observatory State Park above the Columbia Gorge (Washington's flagship public observatory), Sun Lakes–Dry Falls, and the Methow Valley, all crisp and clear on a high-pressure winter night. Westside observers seize the rare clear cold front to view the stars over the Olympics.
The brilliant winter sky returns in force: Orion climbs the south, his belt pointing to dazzling Sirius, all set within the great Winter Hexagon, with the Pleiades and the Orion Nebula rewarding binoculars. The Geminid meteor shower — the year's best and most reliable — peaks around December 14; bundle up and watch from a dark site. For this year's exact Geminid timing and planet positions, see the printable Washington night-sky guide.
Butterflies & Pollinators
No butterflies fly across Washington in December, but they persist, hidden and waiting out the cold and wet. In the mild Puget lowland, the hardy overwintering adults — Mourning Cloak, California Tortoiseshell, and anglewings (commas) — are sheltered behind loose bark, in woodpiles, hollow trees, and unheated outbuildings, and on the rarest sunny, calm late-December afternoon a Mourning Cloak could conceivably stir, though it will not truly fly until late winter.
Most of the state's species pass the darkest month in other stages, shielded from the cold: Western Tiger and Anise Swallowtails as chrysalids fastened to twigs and bark, Sara Orangetip as a chrysalis on the dry eastern slopes ready to emerge first in spring, and fritillary and admiral caterpillars hibernating tiny in the leaf litter and along willow stems. East of the Cascades, the shrub-steppe butterflies are dormant beneath the snow. December is the deep pause before the slow climb back toward spring.
Trees This Month
December displays Washington as evergreen country at its most essential. West of the Cascades, the conifer forest carries the whole landscape through the dark, wet season — Douglas-fir, the towering western redcedar (central to Northwest culture), coastal Sitka spruce, and western hemlock, the state tree, its drooping leaders identifiable across a gray hillside. The temperate rainforests of the Hoh and Quinault are lush and dripping, every trunk and branch furred with moss and fern in the heaviest rain of the year.
The bare hardwoods show their winter form: the white-barked red alder hung with tiny catkins along the creeks, the moss-furred gray trunks of bigleaf maple, and the smooth limbs of understory vine maple. The broadleaf evergreen Pacific madrone keeps its glossy leaves and orange-red berries on the bluffs. East of the Cascades, the open ponderosa pine stands dark over the snow, and the bare western larch, aspen, and cottonwood wait gray and dormant through the cold eastern winter.
Go deeper with the Washington guides
The complete Washington birding, native-plant, wildflower, and night-sky guides — or the whole year in one bundle.
Same month elsewhere: December in West Virginia · December in Wisconsin · December in Wyoming