Georgia Nature Guide: December 2026
December is winter in Georgia — wintering waterfowl and sparrows fill the coast and Coastal Plain, the Christmas Bird Counts get underway, and the evergreen forest holds its color against the bare hardwoods. The long, cold, clear nights bring the brilliant winter stars and the Geminid meteors.
What to look for this week
- Christmas Bird Counts wrap up across Georgia as wintering waterfowl crowd the coastal impoundments at Harris Neck and the Altamaha, and rafts of ducks fill the Piedmont reservoirs.
- The Quadrantid meteor shower peaks in a short, sharp burst around January 3 — best after midnight from a dark north Georgia mountain ridge or the unlit Okefenokee.
- Cold frames and row covers keep collards and kale growing on the Coastal Plain, while mountain gardeners order short-season seed before favorites sell out.
Birds This Month
December is winter-birding season in Georgia, and the Christmas Bird Counts across the state put the wintering birds on full display. The coast and Coastal Plain hold the richest variety: the impoundments and refuges at Harris Neck, Altamaha, and Savannah fill with Northern Pintail, American Wigeon, Gadwall, teal, Ring-necked Ducks, Hooded Mergansers, and rafts of divers, while Wood Storks, wintering American White Pelicans, and Bald Eagles work the rivers and pools. The beaches and sounds at Jekyll and Cumberland hold loons, Northern Gannets, Horned Grebes, and wintering shorebirds.
Old fields and the longleaf wiregrass are alive with wintering sparrows — White-throated, Song, Savannah, Field, Swamp, and the secretive Le Conte's and Henslow's — and feeders fill with Northern Cardinals, Carolina Chickadees, Tufted Titmice, Yellow-rumped and Pine Warblers, Eastern Bluebirds, Cedar Waxwings, American Goldfinches, and the Brown Thrasher (the state bird). In the Coastal Plain longleaf savanna — the fire-managed pinelands of Fort Stewart and the Red Hills near Thomasville — the Red-cockaded Woodpecker, Brown-headed Nuthatch, and Bachman's Sparrow hold their year-round ground, and the north Georgia mountains carry Dark-eyed Juncos, Ruffed Grouse, and winter finches in irruption years.
What's Blooming
December offers few wildflowers in Georgia, but the mild coast keeps a softer winter than the frozen mountains, and the structural remains of the year stand through the cold fields. The dark seed-heads of black-eyed Susan and coneflower, the splitting pods of milkweed still trailing silk, the flat brown umbels of Queen Anne's lace, and the rusty plumes of broomsedge and the pink-faded native muhly grass rim the old fields and roadsides. The native witch hazel may still hold a few spidery yellow flowers in the mountain and Piedmont woods early in the month.
The berries and evergreens carry the winter color — the red fruit of American holly, yaupon, possumhaw, and beautyberry, and the glossy mats of evergreen ground plants: partridgeberry with paired red berries, Christmas fern, and the southern galax on the mountain slopes. The native mountain laurel holds its leaves in the coves. Along the coast the salt marsh glows golden-brown. In mild Piedmont and coastal gardens, the camellia sasanquas and the first camellia japonicas bloom, winter honeysuckle and winter daphne scent the air, and pansies and violas hold their color through the cold.
Garden This Month
December is the quiet, mild winter of the Georgia garden, with the cool-season crops still growing across most of the state and the mountains alone going fully dormant. In the Piedmont and Coastal Plain, harvest the frost-sweetened winter crops — collards, kale, mustard, turnip greens, cabbage, broccoli, spinach, lettuce, and root crops like carrots, turnips, and beets — protecting tender greens with row cover or a cold frame when a hard freeze threatens. The cold actually improves the flavor of the Southern greens, the heart of the Georgia winter table.
Take advantage of the mild dormant season: prune dormant apple, peach, pear, and muscadine grapes on dry days, and — importantly in mild Georgia — plant bare-root and balled fruit trees, blueberries, figs, roses, and other trees and shrubs, whose roots establish all winter in the unfrozen ground. Mulch perennials, strawberries, and tender shrubs, and leave standing seed-heads, hollow stems, and leaf litter through the winter to shelter overwintering butterflies and feed the birds. In the north Georgia mountains, mulch heavily and turn to seed catalogs, ordering early for the short mountain season. Along the coast, you can still plant garlic, onion sets, and English peas in a warm bed.
Zone 6b (north Georgia mountains): the garden is dormant and the ground freezes some weeks. Mulch perennials and garlic, protect cold frames, plant trees and shrubs on mild days, and spend the cold spells planning and ordering the short-season varieties the brief mountain summer demands.
Zone 7b (Piedmont & metro Atlanta): the cool-season garden grows slowly on. Harvest frost-sweetened collards, kale, and roots under row cover, prune dormant fruit trees and grapes on mild dry days, and plant trees, shrubs, and spring bulbs in the unfrozen soil.
Zone 8b (Coastal Plain & coast): the mildest winter gardening in the state. Cold frames and row covers carry collards, kale, spinach, lettuce, and carrots through the season, and you can plant trees, shrubs, garlic, and even onion sets and English peas in a sheltered bed.
What's at the Farmers Market
December markets in Georgia lean on the winter storehouse and the cold-hardy greens, with the holiday season filling the year-round and winter markets from Atlanta to Savannah. The Southern winter greens are the stars — frost-sweetened collards, kale, cabbage, mustard, and turnip greens, at their tender best in the cold — alongside spinach, lettuce, and bunched turnips, carrots, beets, and radishes from mild Coastal Plain rows and protected Piedmont beds. Fresh Georgia pecans from the southwest groves are at their holiday peak.
Storage crops carry the rest of the table — sweet potatoes, Irish potatoes, winter squash, pumpkins, turnips, rutabagas, and garlic — and north Georgia mountain apples still eat crisp from cold storage. The holiday markets showcase the value-added Georgia staples: local honey, sorghum and cane syrup, country hams, stone-ground grits and cornmeal, and seasonal satsumas from the coast. Choose pecans heavy and unblemished and refrigerate or freeze the shelled nuts against rancidity; keep greens cold and humid in the crisper; store sweet potatoes and squash cool and dry but never refrigerated; and hold apples cold and away from other produce.
Night Sky This Month
December's long, cold, clear nights bring some of the finest stargazing of the Georgia year, crowned by the brilliant winter stars and the best meteor shower of the calendar. The Geminid meteor shower peaks around December 14, throwing dozens of bright, slow meteors an hour from a dark site — best from the north Georgia mountains around Brasstown Bald and Black Rock Mountain State Park, the deep Okefenokee at Stephen C. Foster State Park, or the unlit beaches of Cumberland and Jekyll Islands. The Geminids run well in the evening as well as after midnight, a gift for early viewers.
The winter showpieces dominate: Orion strides up the southern sky, his belt pointing down to dazzling Sirius, the sky's brightest star, and up to orange Aldebaran and the Pleiades in Taurus. The great Winter Hexagon sprawls across the sky — Sirius, Procyon, Pollux, Capella, Aldebaran, and Rigel — with the misty Orion Nebula glowing in the sword in binoculars. The winter solstice falls near December 21, the longest night of the year and the season's deepest dark. The printable Georgia night-sky guide lists this year's exact Geminid peak, planet positions, and the best regional dark-sky sites.
Butterflies & Pollinators
December halts butterfly flight in the north Georgia mountains and most of the Piedmont, but the mild Coastal Plain and the year's warm spells keep a few species stirring. On a sunny December afternoon in the south, a hardy cloudless sulphur, sleepy orange, gulf fritillary, or American lady can still appear, and the overwintering adults — mourning cloaks, eastern commas, question marks, and red admirals — may flutter from their shelter behind loose bark and in woodpiles to bask in the weak sun along a sheltered woodland edge.
Most of Georgia's butterflies pass the winter hidden in earlier life stages. The eastern tiger swallowtail (the state butterfly), the zebra and spicebush swallowtails, and the coastal palamedes wait out the cold as chrysalids camouflaged against twigs and in the swamp understory, and many skippers, whites, and the gulf fritillary overwinter as eggs, larvae, or pupae. The monarchs are in their Mexican overwintering forests. Leaving leaf litter, standing stems, seed-heads, and brush piles undisturbed through the winter — especially around native pawpaw, spicebush, passionflower, and milkweed — is the single best thing a Georgia gardener can do to protect next year's butterflies.
Trees This Month
December settles Georgia's deciduous forests into bare winter dormancy, while the state's abundant evergreens hold the color. This is the month to read bark and form: the shaggy strips of shagbark hickory, the smooth gray of American beech still holding bleached marcescent leaves, the broad blocky bark of mature white oak, and the flaking camouflage trunks of sycamore glowing pale along the Piedmont rivers. The last stubborn oak leaves cling rust-brown into the winter.
The conifers and broadleaf evergreens define the winter landscape across all three regions. The Piedmont and Coastal Plain carry vast stands of loblolly, shortleaf, and the iconic longleaf pine, holding open green crowns above the wiregrass. Along the coast, evergreen live oak (the state tree) draped in Spanish moss, southern magnolia, cabbage palmetto, American holly, and wax myrtle hold the maritime forest, and the bare russet ranks of dormant bald cypress rise from the Okefenokee and the blackwater swamps. In the north Georgia mountains, dark eastern hemlock and white pine shade the cool coves and ravines, and the native American holly and red-berried hollies brighten the winter woods. Buds are set and waiting for the early Southern spring.
Go deeper with the Georgia guides
The complete Georgia birding, native-plant, wildflower, and night-sky guides — or the whole year in one bundle.
Same month elsewhere: December in Idaho · December in Illinois · December in Indiana