Wyoming Nature Guide: March 2026
March is the long, slow turn in Wyoming — winter still rules the high country, but the basins begin to thaw, the first migrants push north, and on the sagebrush flats the Greater Sage-Grouse open their leks at dawn, the signature spectacle of the Wyoming spring. The first sagebrush buttercups and pussy willows break the brown.
What to look for this week
- Thousands of elk and Trumpeter Swans hold on the National Elk Refuge at Jackson, the signature Wyoming winter spectacle, with goldeneye on the open spring creeks.
- The Quadrantid meteor shower peaks in a short, sharp burst around January 3 — watch after midnight from a dark Red Desert pullout away from town lights.
- A planning week: order the ultra-short-season seed Wyoming's high valleys depend on before it sells out, and check stored potatoes and squash for rot.
Birds This Month
March is when Wyoming's birding turns, and the headline event begins: on cold dawns across the sagebrush sea, Greater Sage-Grouse gather at traditional leks to strut, fanning spiky tails and popping the yellow air sacs on their chests. Wyoming holds the world's largest population, and lekking starts in earnest this month on flats from the Red Desert to the Upper Green and the Bighorn Basin. With them the basins fill with returning mountain bluebirds — the first true color of spring — along with horned larks, early western meadowlarks, and red-winged and Brewer's blackbirds.
Waterfowl pour back as the ice opens: Canada geese, northern pintail, green-winged teal, American wigeon, common and Barrow's goldeneye, and tundra swans staging on the reservoirs and on Seedskadee NWR along the Green. Sandhill Cranes return to the wet meadows of Jackson Hole and the Bear River, bugling overhead, and the first American kestrels, red-tailed hawks, and turkey vultures ride the warming days north. The wintering Trumpeter Swans linger on the National Elk Refuge.
This month's tip: to see the sage-grouse, arrive at a known lek well before dawn, stay in your vehicle as a blind, and keep your distance — the birds are wary and the display is easily disrupted. Wyoming Game and Fish lists viewing-friendly leks.
What's Blooming
March brings Wyoming's very first wild blooms to the warmest, earliest ground. On south-facing foothill slopes and sagebrush benches at lower elevation, the bright yellow sagebrush buttercup opens through patches of melting snow, often the first wildflower of the Wyoming year. With it the silver-leaved spring beauty and the tiny white-and-pink blooms of Hood's phlox appear on dry foothill ground, and the willows along the river bottoms push out silver pussy willow catkins. The first pasqueflowers — soft lavender cups in silky fur — open on dry gravelly slopes in the milder eastern foothills late in the month. The high mountains stay deep in snow, their alpine bloom three to four months off. In town gardens the earliest crocus and snowdrops push up through frozen ground in the warmest basins, the first cultivated color of the year.
Garden This Month
March gardening in Wyoming is a mix of indoor seed-starting and the first cautious outdoor work in the lower, warmer basins. Under lights, start tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant early in the month and brassicas, lettuce, and herbs through it, so you have strong transplants for a planting window that does not open until late May or June in most of the state. Pot up the onions and leeks started earlier and keep them clipped and stocky.
Outdoors, the season is barely cracking open. In the warmer basin towns you can sow the toughest cool-season crops — spinach, peas, radishes, and fava beans — into a thawed south-facing bed or cold frame late in the month, but be ready to cover them, because frost and snow return easily. Finish dormant pruning of fruit trees, cut back last year's perennial stalks once the worst freeze-thaw has passed, and resist working wet soil — turning cold, saturated ground compacts it for the whole season.
Zone 3b (Jackson Hole, high valleys): still snow-covered and frozen — all the action is indoors. Start tomatoes, peppers, and brassicas under lights now so they are stout transplants by the time the valley's late-May-to-June planting window opens. Keep cold frames cleared so the soil inside can begin to warm.
Zone 4a (high basins, Lander, Cody): start warm-season transplants under lights and, late in the month as the soil thaws on a south slope or in a cold frame, sow the first cold-hardy spinach, peas, and radishes. Last frost is still many weeks off, so protect anything that sprouts.
What's at the Farmers Market
Wyoming's markets in March are still indoor winter markets and on-ranch sales, with the storage harvest thinning but holding. Expect the last of the storage potatoes, onions, carrots, beets, and winter squash from the irrigated valleys, now joined by the first hoop-house greens of the new season — spinach, arugula, mache, and salad mix from growers pushing the season under cover. The state's grass-fed beef, lamb, and bison sell year-round from local ranches.
Look for Wyoming honey, eggs coming back into fuller lay as the days lengthen, and jarred preserves and chokecherry jelly from last summer. Some markets and sugarhouses may carry maple-style products or birch syrup from small producers, though Wyoming is not a syrup state. Refrigerate the tender new greens and use them within a few days, and keep the last of the roots cool, dark, and humid.
Night Sky This Month
March nights stay long and dark over Wyoming's exceptional skies, with the spring equinox bringing the balance of day and night. The Red Desert and southwest basins remain a premier dark-sky destination, and the high backcountry of Yellowstone and Grand Teton is darker still; even towns like Lander, Pinedale, and Saratoga sit under skies where the Milky Way shows. The cold, dry air gives steady, transparent viewing well into spring.
The winter giants slide west after dark — Orion, Taurus, and the winter hexagon sinking toward evening — while spring climbs in the east: Leo the lion with bright Regulus, and behind it the faint realm of galaxies in Virgo and Coma Berenices that a dark Wyoming sky reveals in a telescope. The Big Dipper rides high in the northeast, its handle arcing to orange Arcturus rising late. No major meteor shower falls in March, but the deep dark makes it a fine month to hunt galaxies and star clusters.
Exact planet positions shift year to year — the printable Wyoming night-sky guide lists this season's planet visibility and the darkest viewing sites near you.
Butterflies & Pollinators
March brings Wyoming's first butterflies to the warmest, earliest ground. On mild, sunny days in the lower river valleys, the overwintered adults emerge — mourning cloaks first, big and dark with cream-edged wings, flying over snowmelt along the Green, Snake, and North Platte bottoms, soon joined by Milbert's tortoiseshells and the small angular California tortoiseshell and satyr comma, all of which spent the winter as adults in cottonwood bark and woodpiles. These hibernators don't wait for flowers; they sip tree sap, mud, and the first willow catkins. Watch sunny, sheltered south-facing slopes and warm canyon mouths, where the rocks hold heat and the first flights concentrate. The bulk of the state's butterflies — the swallowtails, sulphurs, blues, fritillaries, and the alpine parnassians — are still weeks to months away, dormant as eggs, caterpillars, and chrysalides, waiting on the warmth that climbs slowly up from the basins into the mountains as spring advances.
Trees This Month
March stirs Wyoming's trees in the lower country while the mountains stay locked in winter. Along the river bottoms the willows color up and push silvery pussy willow catkins, and the plains cottonwoods begin to swell their buds, the gray gallery groves taking on a faint reddish haze before leaf-out. The quaking aspen on the foothill slopes start to swell their catkin buds as the snow recedes from south faces.
The conifers remain the dominant green. Lodgepole pine blankets the Yellowstone and Medicine Bow, Douglas-fir holds the foothills and montane slopes, and limber pine and Engelmann spruce ride the high ridges still deep in snow. On the dry breaks the Rocky Mountain junipers begin releasing clouds of pollen on warm afternoons. Watch the cottonwood and aspen edges for returning mountain bluebirds prospecting old woodpecker holes, and the conifer tops for red crossbills and Clark's nutcrackers still working the cones.
Go deeper with the Wyoming guides
The complete Wyoming birding, native-plant, wildflower, and night-sky guides — or the whole year in one bundle.
Same month elsewhere: March in Alabama · March in Arizona · March in Arkansas