Colorado Nature Guide: February 2026
February is the bright, crystalline depth of the Colorado winter, but the first stirrings of spring appear on the warmest days — great horned owls hoot and nest, the earliest sandhill cranes trickle toward the San Luis Valley, and pasque flowers push through the foothill snow. The long, dry, transparent nights make this one of the very best stargazing months of the year.
What to look for this week
- Bald eagles fish the open tailwater below the South Platte and Arkansas reservoir dams as the lakes freeze.
- The Quadrantid meteor shower peaks around January 3 in a short, sharp burst best seen after midnight from a dark San Luis Valley sky.
- Deep-soak Front Range trees and evergreens on any warm, unfrozen day — winter desiccation, not cold, kills the most plants here.
- The bare plains cottonwoods along the rivers reveal the bulky stick nests of red-tailed hawks and eagles.
Birds This Month
February is still a winter birding month in Colorado, but the breeding clock has started. Great horned owls are on eggs now in old hawk and cottonwood nests along the Front Range and plains, hooting through the cold nights, and the resident raptors begin to pair and display. The wintering hawks and eagles are still here — scan the eastern plains and the Pawnee National Grassland for rough-legged and ferruginous hawks, golden eagles, and prairie falcons, and the river corridors for concentrations of bald eagles.
The high-country specialties hold through the cold. The three rosy-finch species — including the Colorado-area brown-capped rosy-finch — still swarm the foothill and mountain-town feeders around Estes Park and Allenspark, and the white-tailed ptarmigan remains snow-white on the alpine tundra. Foothill feeders carry Cassin's finches, pine siskins, evening grosbeaks in irruption years, mountain chickadees, and Steller's jays.
Late in the month the first migrants stir. The earliest sandhill cranes begin to trickle into the San Luis Valley ahead of the great March staging, the first mountain bluebirds may appear on the plains and lower foothills on a warm spell, and red-winged blackbirds begin returning to the cattail marshes and singing.
This month's tip: listen at dusk and after dark for the deep hooting of paired great horned owls — February is peak owl-courtship season, and a quiet evening in a cottonwood grove is the easiest way to find them.
What's Blooming
February is still deep winter across most of Colorado, but on the warmest, sunniest south-facing foothill slopes of the Front Range, the very first wildflower of the year can appear by late month: the pasque flower (Pulsatilla), whose silky lavender goblets push up through the matted grass and even through thin snow, wrapped in silvery hairs that insulate them against the cold. It is the great harbinger of the Colorado spring.
Otherwise the dormant landscape still rules. The eastern plains stand in cured fawn and straw, the rabbitbrush and fringed sage silver in the low sun, and the foothill Gambel oak scrub holds its bronze marcescent leaves. The flat basal rosettes of penstemons, evening primrose, and spring beauty wait against the warming soil, and the green bayonets of soapweed yucca remain the most living color on the plains. Watch the warmest, earliest-melting hillsides above the Front Range cities for the first pasque flowers in the last days of the month.
Garden This Month
February is the month the Colorado growing season begins indoors. Under lights along the Front Range, gardeners start the long-lead crops the short, high-altitude season demands — onions, leeks, peppers, eggplant, and the first tomatoes and slow brassicas — so that sturdy transplants are ready the moment the danger of frost passes, which here is not until mid-to-late May in most of the state and even later in the mountains.
Outdoors, the dominant tasks are still protection and water. The intense February sun on snow drives violent freeze-thaw cycles that heave perennials out of the ground, so keep crowns, garlic, and strawberries well mulched, and continue winter watering — deep-soak trees, shrubs, and evergreens on any thaw day when the soil is not frozen, because dry winter desiccation is the leading killer of Colorado landscape plants. On the mild days, finish pruning dormant fruit trees, grapes, and summer-blooming shrubs while the structure is bare and easy to read, and refresh the trunk wraps that prevent sunscald on bright, cold afternoons.
Zone 4a (higher foothill and mountain valleys): still firmly dormant, with a season that may not begin in earnest until late May. Keep perennial crowns and woody plants protected against the freeze-thaw heaving that the strong February sun drives, water trees and evergreens on any unfrozen thaw day, and use the month to start onions, leeks, and the slowest brassicas indoors so transplants are ready when the brief season finally opens.
Zone 4b (mountain towns and high foothills): dormant but planning hard. Start onion, leek, and pepper seed indoors under lights this month, prune dormant fruit trees and grapes on the mild days, and keep checking that the wind and sun have not stripped mulch from perennial crowns and garlic. Continue winter watering of trees during dry spells.
Zone 5b (Front Range cities — Denver, Boulder, Fort Collins, Colorado Springs): the indoor seed-starting season hits full stride. Sow onions, leeks, peppers, eggplant, and the earliest tomatoes and brassicas under lights now. Prune dormant fruit trees, grapes, and summer-blooming shrubs, and keep winter-watering trees and evergreens during the long dry, sunny spells. The average last frost is still well into May, so hold all tender planting outdoors.
What's at the Farmers Market
The Colorado winter market scene runs on through February much as it did in January, with the Front Range indoor and online markets in Denver, Boulder, Longmont, and Fort Collins carrying a steady core of storage and protected crops. The state's San Luis Valley potatoes remain the anchor, alongside storage carrots, beets, onions, parsnips, and the last of the winter squash, plus dried pinto beans from the valley and southeastern plains.
High tunnels keep the fresh greens coming — cold-hardy spinach (sweetest now after the cold), kale, arugula, tatsoi, and microgreens. The pantry staples round out the tables: local honey, eggs, grass-fed beef, bison, and lamb, milled flour, and the frozen and roasted Pueblo green chiles many growers put up each fall.
For selection and storage: store potatoes and onions cool, dark, and airy rather than refrigerated; trim root-crop tops before refrigerating; and keep the remaining winter squash in a cool, dry room. Store tunnel greens dry and loosely bagged and use them within a few days, and keep dried beans and flour airtight and cool.
Night Sky This Month
February delivers some of the finest stargazing of the entire Colorado year — long nights, bone-dry air, and the high-altitude clarity that makes this state's skies legendary. Head for one of the certified International Dark Sky sites: Great Sand Dunes National Park beneath the Sangre de Cristos, the dark-sky town of Westcliffe-Silver Cliff and its Smokey Jack Observatory in the Wet Mountain Valley, Black Canyon of the Gunnison, Dinosaur National Monument, or Jackson Lake State Park out on the plains. Many of these host winter star parties; dress for genuine mountain cold.
The sky overhead is still the brilliant winter showcase. Orion rides high in the south early in the evening with the glowing Orion Nebula, surrounded by Taurus, the Pleiades, Gemini, Auriga, and the Dog Stars Sirius and Procyon. By late evening Leo climbs in the east, the first herald of spring, and the Big Dipper swings high in the northeast. With no major meteor shower this month, February is a deep-sky month for telescope owners — the Orion Nebula and the open star clusters of the winter Milky Way are at their best.
Because planet positions change each year, check the printable Colorado night-sky guide for this year's specific viewing nights and planet visibility from your latitude. Clear, calm nights behind a passing cold front give the steadiest, most transparent high-country skies.
Butterflies & Pollinators
February is still a near-dormant month for Colorado butterflies, but the state's hardiest adults can appear on the warmest, sunniest days. The mourning cloak, Colorado's most cold-tolerant butterfly, overwinters as an adult under cottonwood and aspen bark and in foothill crevices, and on a still, sunny late-winter afternoon along the Front Range it will sometimes flutter out to bask on warm rock or tree bark before retreating to shelter. The Milbert's tortoiseshell and the migratory California tortoiseshell may do the same in foothill canyons.
The rest of the state's butterflies remain locked in winter dormancy keyed to altitude. The state insect, the Colorado hairstreak, still waits as an egg against the dormant buds of foothill Gambel oak. The alpine and subalpine species — the Rocky Mountain parnassian, the alpine fritillaries, and the high arctics — sleep frozen as eggs and small larvae beneath the insulating tundra snowpack, and the western tiger swallowtails and Weidemeyer's admirals of the riparian canyons overwinter as chrysalides on dead stems and bark. Leaving leaf litter, dead stems, and brush piles intact through the winter shelters all of them.
Trees This Month
The Colorado trees stand at rest through February, but the first faint signals of the turning year appear by month's end. Along the Front Range and plains waterways, the great plains cottonwoods begin to swell their buds, and the bottomland willows brighten to a haze of yellow and orange twigs that signals sap rising. The Rocky Mountain junipers of the foothills and canyons begin shedding pollen on the warmest days, still heavy with frosted blue berry-cones.
The high country remains deep in winter. The dark evergreens — Colorado blue spruce, ponderosa pine, Engelmann spruce, subalpine fir, and lodgepole pine — carry their snow loads, and the bare white quaking aspen groves stand silent on the slopes. In the foothills the Gambel oak scrub still holds its bronze marcescent leaves, and the planted blue spruce and juniper windbreaks around farms and towns shelter wintering robins, waxwings, and the berry-eating Townsend's solitaires that guard them.
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Same month elsewhere: February in Connecticut · February in Delaware · February in Washington, D.C.