Florida Nature Guide: February 2026
February is still deep in Florida's mild dry season, when wading-bird rookeries begin to fill, the first spring migrants trickle into the south, and manatees gather in the warm springs. The vegetable garden is in full production and citrus hangs heavy on the trees, while the cool, clear nights make for fine stargazing on the open prairies.
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
February holds Florida's winter abundance while the breeding season stirs. Wading-bird rookeries are filling: Great Egrets, Wood Storks, Anhingas, Roseate Spoonbills, and herons begin courtship and nest-building at colonies like the famous boardwalk rookery at Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, where Wood Storks nest high in the old-growth bald cypress, and at the St. Augustine and Wakodahatchee marshes. The dry-season pools of Everglades National Park still concentrate feeding storks, egrets, and spoonbills along the Anhinga and Eco Pond trails.
The wintering crowds linger on the Space Coast — Merritt Island NWR still holds rafts of pintail, wigeon, teal, scaup, and Reddish Egrets, with the chance of the rare Roseate Spoonbill flush at dawn. The endemic Florida Scrub-Jay is conspicuous now as pairs defend territory in the scrub, the Snail Kite works the Kissimmee and Loxahatchee marshes, and Limpkins call from spring runs. By late month the first Swallow-tailed Kites reappear over the south Florida cypress and the Purple Martins return to their houses statewide — the leading edge of the spring movement — while wintering warblers and sparrows still fill the live oaks and marsh edges.
What's Blooming
February brings the first real surge of Florida's spring bloom in the warm central and southern peninsula, even as the north stays cool. The native Carolina jessamine and the wild azalea (pinxter, Rhododendron canescens) begins to open in the north Florida woods, and the redbud and wild plum flower along the Panhandle. Roadsides green up, and the hardy Spanish needles (Bidens alba) and blanketflower keep feeding the butterflies.
In the south, the dry-season tropical and hammock flora is at its showy best — firebush, necklacepod, lantana, beach sunflower, and scorpionstail keep nectar flowing, and the native coontie cycad holds its bright orange seed cones. The orange blossoms — the state flower — perfume the central-Florida groves as the citrus blooms heavily this month, scenting whole towns. Native red maple hangs its tiny crimson flowers and winged seeds over the swamps, and gardens fill with azaleas, camellias, and the first spiderwort and blue-eyed grass opening in the lengthening days.
Garden This Month
February is a turning point in the Florida garden — the cool-season crops are still in full production while the spring planting window opens in the central and south. Across the state, harvest broccoli, cabbage, collards, kale, lettuce, carrots, beets, and peas, and keep sowing successive greens and roots in the warm soil. In central and south Florida, this is the prime month to set out tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, squash, cucumbers, and beans after the last frost — earlier here than almost anywhere in the country — so the crops can mature before the brutal summer heat and rains arrive.
Frost is still the watchword in north and central Florida, where a hard February freeze can still strike; keep cloth ready and protect tender citrus and young transplants. This is the season to prune dormant deciduous fruit trees, roses, and crape myrtles, and to plant bare-root and container citrus, blueberries, peaches, and deciduous fruit while still semi-dormant. Plant City strawberries keep producing, and asparagus and onions size up. Mulch deeply, weed in the mild weather, and fertilize the established beds as the warm-season growth accelerates.
Zone 10b (the lower east coast & south Florida): frost-free and in full dry-season production. Keep planting and harvesting warm-season vegetables and tropical herbs, sow another round of beans and squash, and water regularly as the dry season deepens.
Zone 8b (north Florida & the Panhandle): still the coldest corner, with frost possible into March. Keep covering tender crops, harvest cool-season greens and roots, and toward month's end start tomato and pepper seedlings indoors for the brief window between the last frost and the summer heat.
Zone 9b (central Florida, Orlando & Tampa): the spring planting season opens. After the average last frost, set out tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, squash, beans, and cucumbers, and keep harvesting the cool-season crops. Watch the late-February forecasts for a final cold snap.
What's at the Farmers Market
February markets stay loaded with Florida's winter harvest, one of the country's only places brimming with local produce in late winter. Citrus is at its sweetest — late navel and Valencia oranges, grapefruit, tangerines, honeybells, and kumquats from the central and Indian River groves. Choose heavy, firm-skinned fruit, and store cool for weeks of keeping. Plant City strawberries are at their absolute peak this month, sold by the flat at roadside stands and the markets around Hillsborough and Polk counties.
The winter vegetable fields keep pouring out tomatoes, bell peppers, snap beans, sweet corn, cucumbers, squash, cabbage, collards, lettuce, and cool-season broccoli and cauliflower from the southern and east-coast growing regions, alongside radishes, beets, and carrots. Central-Florida blueberries begin trickling in from the warmest plantings. Look too for Florida honey, cane syrup, stone-ground grits, and roadside boiled-peanut stands. Refrigerate berries unwashed in a single layer, keep tomatoes at room temperature for best flavor, and hold the greens and beans cool and humid in the crisper.
Night Sky This Month
February's cool, dry, settled nights keep Florida's winter sky at its clearest, and the state's dark-sky places shine. Kissimmee Prairie Preserve State Park, Florida's first certified International Dark Sky Park, runs winter star parties on its huge unlit prairie, where the flat horizon lets the whole sky stand out, and Big Cypress National Preserve offers the other great escape from the Orlando–Tampa–Miami glow. The state's low, flat terrain means constellations rise nearly to the horizon, and southern stars climb higher here than across most of the country.
The winter showpieces still rule the evening: Orion stands due south with the Orion Nebula in his sword, his belt pointing to brilliant Sirius, while the Winter Hexagon and the Pleiades blaze overhead. As the night wears on, Leo the Lion climbs in the east with bright Regulus, the first herald of spring, and the long faint sprawl of Hydra snakes across the southern sky. There is no major meteor shower this month, but the moonless nights of a flat, dark Florida prairie reward a simple sweep with binoculars. The printable Florida night-sky guide lists this year's exact planet positions and dark-sky sites for your region.
Butterflies & Pollinators
February sees Florida's butterfly activity climbing as the days lengthen and the central and south peninsula warm. The state butterfly, the zebra longwing, floats through hammock edges and gardens, and the gulf fritillary works passionflower and lantana on every warm afternoon. Cloudless sulphurs, white peacocks, common buckeyes, great southern whites on the coasts, giant and palamedes swallowtails, and long-tailed skippers are all on the wing in the warm south, and the wintering and resident monarchs are breeding wherever milkweed grows in the central and southern counties.
The first spring broods begin to appear. New-generation giant swallowtails emerge to lay eggs on citrus and wild lime, spicebush and tiger swallowtails start flying in the north Florida woods, and the southeast-coast hammocks keep their year-round atala hairstreaks on coontie. In the cooler north and Panhandle, fewer species are out, but a warm February day brings sulphurs, question marks, and the earliest azures and elfins. Planting milkweed, passionflower, coontie, and abundant nectar like Spanish needles and firebush now sets up the gardens for the surge of spring breeding ahead.
Trees This Month
February signals the start of Florida's subtropical spring in the trees, even as the evergreens hold steady. The red maples of the north and central swamps hang heavy with crimson flowers and red-winged samaras, washing whole wetland margins in red — the peninsula's earliest splash of color. Live oaks begin their brief leaf exchange, dropping last year's leaves and pushing new growth almost at once, and trailing long catkins of yellow-green pollen from the moss-draped limbs.
The bald cypress in the swamps of Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, Big Cypress, and the blackwater rivers still stand bare and russet, but their twigs are setting buds for the green flush ahead. The Panhandle longleaf pine sandhills send up their purple-red 'candles' of new growth and begin shedding clouds of golden pollen across the wiregrass. Wild plum, redbud, and Chickasaw plum flower white and pink along north Florida fencerows and the Panhandle woods, the Walter's viburnum foams white in the hammocks, and the citrus groves come into heavy fragrant bloom. The state tree, the sabal palm, and the saw palmetto hold their evergreen fans through it all.
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: February in Georgia · February in Idaho · February in Illinois