Tennessee Nature Guide: February 2026
February is Tennessee's turning month — Sandhill Cranes still mass at Hiwassee while the first Sandhill Crane Festival crowds thin, eagles linger at Reelfoot, and on the warmest days red cedar pollen drifts across the Central Basin glades. Snowdrops, witch hazel, and the earliest daffodils open in the mild west even as the Smokies hold their winter snows.
What to look for this week
- Sandhill Cranes mass by the thousands at the Hiwassee Refuge near Birchwood while the last Christmas Bird Counts sweep the state, tallying eagles, cranes, and waterfowl.
- The Quadrantid meteor shower peaks in a short, sharp burst around January 3 — best after midnight from a dark Cumberland Plateau overlook at Pickett State Park.
- A planning week on the frozen plateau, but West Tennessee cold frames keep collards and kale growing — order seeds early before favorites sell out.
Birds This Month
February holds Tennessee's winter spectacles while the first stirrings of spring begin. Sandhill Cranes still stage by the thousands at the Hiwassee Refuge, with peak numbers and the chance of a wintering Whooping Crane before the cranes drift north late in the month. Bald Eagles remain conspicuous at Reelfoot Lake and along the Tennessee and Cumberland reservoirs, many already refurbishing nests and incubating early eggs.
Waterfowl linger on the open lakes — Mallard, Gadwall, Northern Shoveler, Ring-necked Duck, Common Goldeneye, and Hooded Merganser — while American Woodcock begin their twilight sky-dances over damp fields and thickets across Middle and West Tennessee on mild evenings late in the month. Feeders peak with Northern Mockingbirds, Northern Cardinals, House Finches, Carolina Wrens, and clouds of wintering sparrows and juncos, and the first Red-winged Blackbirds and Common Grackles roll back into the marshes. Listen for the year's first singing Carolina Chickadees and Tufted Titmice on warm, sunny mornings.
What's Blooming
February brings Tennessee's first true flowers to the milder west and the warming Central Basin. In rich coves and on south-facing slopes, the year's earliest native wildflowers can break ground — harbinger-of-spring, aptly nicknamed "salt-and-pepper," and the nodding maroon flowers of spicebush swelling toward bloom. Skunk cabbage pushes up in a few cold mountain seeps, melting the frost around it.
In gardens and old home sites, the late-winter show builds: snowdrops and winter aconite carpet sheltered beds, fragrant witch hazel and wintersweet still bloom on bare twigs, hellebores (Lenten roses) nod under the shrubs, and the first crocus and early daffodils open across Middle and West Tennessee. The shrubs begin to color — forsythia buds swell yellow, red maple hazes the swamp edges crimson, and dense eastern red cedar across the glades releases clouds of pollen on warm afternoons. Evergreen mountain laurel and red-berried holly still anchor the winter woods.
Garden This Month
February is the pivot from planning to planting across most of Tennessee, though the high plateau and mountains stay dormant. It is the prime month for dormant pruning — shape apple, peach, and pear trees, blueberries, and grapevines before the sap rises, and apply dormant oil to smother overwintering pests just before bud-break. Cut back ornamental grasses and last year's perennial stems now that overwintering insects have largely emerged.
Indoors, the seed-starting season is in full swing: sow tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant under lights in Middle and West Tennessee, and start onions, leeks, and slow flowers earlier still. Outdoors in the warmer west and Central Basin, direct-sow the hardy cool-season crops — English peas, spinach, lettuce, radishes, carrots, and beets — and plant potatoes, onion sets, and asparagus crowns in a worked bed. Top-dress garlic and strawberries, and watch the forecast: late hard freezes are routine, so keep row covers ready for tender new growth.
Zone 6b (Cumberland Plateau & East Tennessee valleys): still largely dormant and prone to hard freezes. Finish dormant pruning of fruit trees and grapes on dry days, apply dormant oil before bud-break, and start onions, leeks, and the slowest seedlings indoors under lights.
Zone 7a (Middle Tennessee & Nashville Basin): the soil works on mild days. Sow peas, spinach, radishes, and the first lettuce in a sheltered bed late in the month, set out onion sets, and start tomatoes and peppers indoors by month's end for spring transplanting.
Zone 7b (southern Middle & West Tennessee): the spring garden is opening. Direct-sow peas, spinach, kale, carrots, and beets, plant potatoes and onion sets, and uncover overwintered greens to push new growth as the days lengthen.
What's at the Farmers Market
February markets in Tennessee still lean on the root cellar and cold storage, but the indoor winter markets in Nashville, Memphis, and Knoxville keep the local table supplied. Sweet potatoes, potatoes, winter squash, onions, garlic, turnips, and beets remain the backbone, and frost-sweetened collards, kale, cabbage, and turnip greens hold in the field and cold frame.
The first hints of spring appear as cold-frame lettuces, spinach, and tender green onions reach the stalls late in the month, and overwintered Cumberland Plateau storage apples still eat well. This is also peak season for the pantry staples Tennessee farmers make through the cold months — Appalachian sorghum syrup, local honey, stone-ground grits and cornmeal, country hams, and farmstead preserves. Choose storage roots that are firm with no soft spots or sprouting, keep sweet potatoes and squash cool and dry but unrefrigerated, and look the greens over for the sweetest, most cold-tightened leaves.
Night Sky This Month
Tennessee's best February skies are on the high, dry Cumberland Plateau and in the eastern mountains. Pickett CCC Memorial State Park and Pogue Creek Canyon, the state's International Dark Sky Park, hold genuinely black northern skies, and the Bays Mountain Park observatory near Kingsport and the Great Smoky Mountains overlooks offer dark winter viewing within reach of the cities. February's still-cold, often clear nights keep the winter sky sharp.
The great Winter Hexagon still rules the evening — Orion, Sirius, Procyon, Pollux, Capella, Aldebaran, and Rigel — but in the east the springtime stars are climbing, with Leo the lion and bright Regulus rising and the Beehive Cluster in Cancer reachable in binoculars. The Big Dipper swings high in the northeast, its handle arcing toward Arcturus rising late. There is no major meteor shower this month. The printable Tennessee night-sky guide gives this year's exact planet positions and the best dark-sky sites for your part of the state.
Butterflies & Pollinators
February stirs Tennessee's first butterflies on the warmest afternoons, especially in the milder west and the sun-warmed Central Basin glades. The adult-overwintering nymphalids lead the way: a mourning cloak or eastern comma may glide along a sunlit woodland edge, and a question mark can be roused from behind bark on a 60-degree day to bask on a tree trunk or sip oozing sap. These butterflies skipped the chrysalis entirely, hibernating as adults, which is why they are the first on the wing each year.
Everything else still waits. Monarchs remain in their Mexican overwintering colonies and will not reach Tennessee for weeks. The eastern tiger and zebra swallowtails hang as chrysalids, the great spangled fritillary sits as a half-grown caterpillar near its violets, and the cabbage whites and orange sulphurs of summer pass as chrysalids in the field edges. A warm late-February spell can coax the first overwintered cloudless sulphur across a Memphis-area garden. Continue to leave standing stems and leaf litter intact — the pupae and dormant caterpillars are tucked among them, waiting for March warmth.
Trees This Month
February is when Tennessee's bare forests first flush with color in the canopy, weeks before the leaves. The red maples open their tiny crimson flowers across the swamp edges and bottoms, hazing whole hillsides red, and the silver maples and elms follow with their early bloom. Eastern red cedar, the signature evergreen of the cedar glades, sheds clouds of yellow pollen on warm afternoons, and the alders and hazelnuts dangle lengthening catkins along the streams.
The evergreens still hold the winter scene — dark red spruce and Fraser fir on the high Smokies summits, dense cedar across the glades, and the pines of the plateau and Coastal Plain. Read the bare hardwoods by bark and bud while you still can: the diamond-ridged white ash, the corky-winged twigs of sweetgum, the smooth steel-gray beech with its sharp marcescent leaves, and the swelling flower buds on the red maples and the tulip poplar. Along the western rivers the dormant bald cypress still stands russet-barked over Reelfoot Lake. Sap is running — it is the tail of the maple-sugaring season on the Cumberland Plateau, where a few small operations still tap and boil.
Go deeper with the Tennessee guides
The complete Tennessee birding, native-plant, wildflower, and night-sky guides — or the whole year in one bundle.
Same month elsewhere: February in Texas · February in Utah · February in Vermont