Mississippi Nature Guide: December 2026
December settles Mississippi into its mild winter, with the Delta packed with wintering ducks and geese, the Christmas Bird Counts underway, and Gulf oysters at their prime. The longest nights bring the brilliant winter sky, and the cool-season garden grows quietly on.
What to look for this week
- The Delta is packed with wintering ducks and geese at their peak, and the last Christmas Bird Counts wrap up across Mississippi as Snow Geese rise in roaring clouds over the flooded fields.
- The Quadrantid meteor shower peaks in a short, sharp burst around January 3 — best after midnight from the dark, open Delta or the unlit Gulf Islands beaches.
- Cold frames and the mild coast keep collards, kale, and spinach growing; order seed early before the warm-season favorites sell out.
- Gulf oysters from the Mississippi Sound are at their cool-season prime, alongside stored Vardaman sweet potatoes and frost-sweetened greens.
Birds This Month
December is full winter waterfowl season in Mississippi, the Delta packed with birds along the Mississippi Flyway. The flooded fields, catfish ponds, and backwater sloughs hold great numbers of Mallard, Gadwall, Northern Pintail, American Wigeon, Green-winged Teal, Northern Shoveler, Ring-necked Duck, Canvasback, and Redhead, with vast flocks of Snow Geese, Greater White-fronted Geese, and Ross's Geese rising in roaring clouds. Bald Eagles winter along every major river, and Sam D. Hamilton Noxubee NWR and the Delta refuges are at their crowded best. The Christmas Bird Counts tally the winter birds across the state this month.
The wintering land birds are settled in: White-throated and White-crowned Sparrows, Dark-eyed Juncos, Yellow-rumped and Pine Warblers, Ruby-crowned Kinglets, Hermit Thrushes, Cedar Waxwings, and American Robins fill the woods and feeders alongside the resident Northern Cardinals, Carolina Wrens, and the Northern Mockingbird, the state bird. In the southern longleaf pine the endangered Red-cockaded Woodpecker tends its cavity clusters, Sandhill Cranes winter in the coastal savannas, and on the Gulf coast the Brown Pelicans, loons, Northern Gannets, Redhead, and rafts of scaup work the cold Sound and the barrier-island waters.
What's Blooming
December offers few wildflowers in Mississippi, but the mild coast stays greener than the frosty north, and the structural winter landscape holds its quiet beauty. The first hard freezes brown the last fall bloomers, but the native grasses keep their tawny and rosy seed-heads — little bluestem, broomsedge, muhly grass, and Indian grass in the prairies and old fields — and the dark seed-heads of black-eyed Susan, coneflower, and the silk-trailing milkweed pods stand through the winter.
The evergreen berried plants take over the color: the American holly and yaupon hang heavy with red berries, the possumhaw holly glows leafless and scarlet along the wet woods, the beautyberry holds its magenta clusters, and the smilax and greenbrier keep their dark berries. In gardens, the winter-blooming camellias (japonica) open their first flowers, the sasanquas finish, and the fragrant paperwhites and the earliest Lenten roses (hellebores) bloom in the mild southern gardens. Cool-season pansies and violas brighten the beds through the winter.
Garden This Month
December settles the Mississippi garden into its mild winter, but the state's gentle climate keeps the cool-season vegetables growing where colder states lie frozen. Cold frames, row covers, and the open coastal beds carry the South's signature winter greens — collards, kale, mustard, turnip greens, spinach, lettuce, and carrots — through the freezes, sweetened by the cold, and the broccoli, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, and root crops keep producing. Harvest as needed and protect everything under cover on the hardest freezing nights.
The dormant season is the time for the woody work: prune fruit trees, muscadines, blueberries, and roses on the mild dry days, and plant bare-root fruit and shade trees, shrubs, and berries so the roots establish over winter. Mulch the overwintering garlic, strawberries, and tender perennials heavily against the freezes, and along the coast protect the satsuma and other citrus on the coldest nights. Clean, sharpen, and oil the tools, turn finished compost into the resting beds, and spend the long evenings planning next year's garden and ordering seed early for the warm-season favorites. The garden rests, but the Southern table still grows.
Zone 7b (northeastern hills & the north): the coldest corner, with hard freezes and occasional snow. Mulch overwintering garlic and greens heavily, protect tender shrubs, prune dormant fruit trees on mild dry days, and plan next year's garden by the fire.
Zone 8a (central Mississippi & the Delta): the cool-season garden grows on under cover. Cold frames and row covers carry collards, kale, spinach, lettuce, and carrots through the freezes, and the dormant season is right for pruning and bare-root planting.
Zone 9a (Gulf coast): the mildest gardening in the state. Hardy greens and root crops grow on outdoors, satsuma and other citrus need only frost protection on the coldest nights, and you can still set out cool-season transplants.
What's at the Farmers Market
December markets carry the winter pantry and the holiday harvest across Mississippi, supported by year-round and winter markets from Jackson to the coast. Gulf oysters from the Mississippi Sound are at their cool-season prime, a heritage of the coast and a holiday tradition. The frost-sweetened greens are at their best — collards, kale, mustard, turnip greens, cabbage — alongside broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, beets, turnips, winter squash, and pumpkins. Vardaman sweet potatoes, the state's signature crop, are abundant from storage for the holiday table.
The fall pecans fill the stands for the season's baking, and value-added staples the state makes well round out the markets: local honey, sorghum and cane syrup, stone-ground grits and cornmeal, jams, and farm eggs. Choose oysters tightly closed and heavy, smelling of clean seawater, and keep them cold under a damp cloth, cup-side down, using them promptly. Pick sweet potatoes firm and unblemished and store them cool and dry, never refrigerated. Choose greens crisp and unwilted, and pecans heavy in clean shells, storing shelled nuts cold to keep the oils fresh. The markets carry the warm flavors of a Southern winter holiday.
Night Sky This Month
December's long winter nights around the solstice bring the year's earliest dark and some of its finest viewing from Mississippi's dark sites — the wide Delta, the forests of Noxubee NWR and the De Soto National Forest, Tishomingo State Park in the northeast hills, and the unlit seaward beaches of the Gulf Islands National Seashore. The local astronomy clubs around Jackson and the coast hold winter star parties when the cold, clear weather settles in.
The brilliant winter constellations command the evening: Orion strides up the southeastern sky, his belt pointing down to dazzling Sirius, the sky's brightest star, and around them sprawls the great Winter Hexagon — Sirius, Procyon, Pollux, Capella, Aldebaran, and Rigel — with the Pleiades cluster riding high and the misty Orion Nebula glowing in the sword in binoculars. The Geminid meteor shower, the richest of the year, peaks around December 14, with dozens of meteors an hour from a dark site, best after the early-evening rise of Gemini. The printable Mississippi night-sky guide lists this year's exact meteor-peak dates, planet positions, and the best dark-sky sites for the winter nights.
Butterflies & Pollinators
December halts most butterfly flight in Mississippi, but the state's mild winters and warm spells keep a few species stirring, especially along the Gulf coast. The goatweed leafwing overwinters as an adult, disguised as a dead leaf, and may flush from bark or brush along a sunlit trail on a warm afternoon; the mourning cloak, question mark, and eastern comma also hibernate as adults in the hill-country woods, ready to fly on the mildest winter days. Along the warm coast a hardy cloudless sulphur, gulf fritillary, or fiery skipper can occasionally appear on the year's gentlest days.
Most species wait out the cold in earlier life stages. The last migratory monarchs have reached the Mexican overwintering forests, leaving none in Mississippi. The eastern tiger and other swallowtails overwinter as camouflaged chrysalises on twigs, and many skippers and whites pass the cold as eggs or larvae on their dormant host plants. Leaving the leaf litter, the standing seed stalks, and the brush piles undisturbed through the winter shelters the hibernating adults and the overwintering pupae and eggs, the single best thing a Mississippi gardener can do to protect next summer's butterflies.
Trees This Month
December strips Mississippi's deciduous forest bare and reveals its winter architecture, while the state's many evergreens hold the landscape's color. This is the month to read bark and form: the shaggy strips of shagbark hickory, the smooth gray of American beech still clutching its bleached marcescent leaves, the broad blocky bark of mature white oak, and the flaking camouflage trunks of sycamore glowing pale along the river bottoms.
The evergreens define the winter scene. The Southern magnolia, the state tree, holds its glossy dark leaves statewide, and across the southern coastal plain the longleaf, loblolly, slash, and spruce pines stand dark over the wiregrass savannas. Along the Gulf coast the great spreading live oaks, hung with Spanish moss, keep their leaves beside the American holly, bright with red berries, the wax myrtle, and the yaupon. In the Delta swamps the bare russet ranks of dormant bald cypress, their knees rising from the dark water, and the bottomland water and overcup oaks wait out the cold. The buds are set and waiting — the swelling red clusters on the red maples already promise the earliest Southern spring just weeks away.
Go deeper with the Mississippi guides
The complete Mississippi birding, native-plant, wildflower, and night-sky guides — or the whole year in one bundle.
Same month elsewhere: December in Missouri · December in Montana · December in Nebraska