Vermont Nature Guide: November 2026
November is the gray, bare-branch month of late fall in Vermont — the foliage gone, the first snows dusting the high country, and the year settling toward winter. The last waterfowl push through before freeze-up, and the woods grow quiet, open, and stark under the lowering sky.
What to look for this week
- Feeders are at their winter peak — black-capped chickadees, nuthatches, and cardinals work the seed, while redpolls and pine siskins may arrive in a northern-finch irruption year.
- The Quadrantid meteor shower peaks in a short, sharp burst around January 3; watch the northeast after midnight from a dark Vermont ridge away from town lights.
- A planning week — order seeds early, especially the short-season varieties Northeast Kingdom gardens depend on, before they sell out.
Birds This Month
November is the late-migration and feeder-buildup month. The last big waterfowl push moves through the Champlain Valley before the lakes freeze — Canada and lingering snow geese, common and hooded mergansers, common goldeneye, buffleheads, scaup, and other diving ducks staging on Lake Champlain. Dead Creek WMA still holds geese early in the month. Bald eagles concentrate on the open water as smaller waters ice over.
At feeders, the winter cast settles in: black-capped chickadees, nuthatches, tufted titmice, woodpeckers, cardinals, and blue jays, with dark-eyed juncos and tree sparrows beneath them. Watch for irruptive northern finches — redpolls, pine siskins, evening and pine grosbeaks — arriving in a good flight year. Wild turkeys flock in the bare woods, and snow buntings swirl over open fields.
This month's tip: get feeders cleaned, stocked, and protected from squirrels now, before the snow — and add suet for the woodpeckers and a heated water source, which draws birds all winter long.
What's Blooming
The wildflower season is over in a Vermont November — hard freezes have ended the blooms, and the landscape is brown, gray, and increasingly white in the high country. The last flowers of the year are the spidery yellow blossoms of witch-hazel, still hanging on bare branches early in the month, the curious final native bloom that flowers as everything else sleeps. Otherwise the interest is in form and seed: the dried, sculptural seed heads of goldenrod, aster, milkweed spilling its silk, and the tan grasses standing against the first snows, all of it feeding the wintering birds.
The bright twigs return to prominence — the red of red-osier dogwood and the orange-red berries of winterberry holly and highbush cranberry glow against the gray. Indoors, the season turns to amaryllis and forced paperwhites, and gardeners begin the long winter of planning the beds to come.
Garden This Month
November is the last call for putting the Vermont garden to bed before winter. Finish harvesting the frost-hardy holdouts — leeks, parsnips, Brussels sprouts, kale, carrots, and cabbage sweeten in the cold and can be pulled into early November (mulch a row of carrots or parsnips heavily and you can dig them through winter). Plant any remaining garlic and mulch it well, and finish setting spring bulbs before the ground freezes hard.
Complete the cleanup: cut back diseased material, but leave healthy seed heads and stems standing for birds and overwintering insects; spread compost; drain, coil, and store hoses; and shut off outdoor water. Mulch perennials and strawberries after the ground starts to freeze, wrap young tree trunks against rodent and deer damage, and move tender potted plants to shelter. Once everything is tucked in and the first snows fall, the gardening year is done — and the seed-catalog dreaming begins.
Zone 4b (central Vermont & valleys): finish all cleanup before the ground freezes — mulch garlic and tender perennials, drain and store hoses, and wrap young tree trunks against rodents and deer. Harvest the last frost-sweetened roots and hardy greens early in the month.
Zone 5a (lower Champlain Valley): the warmest zone may still allow late cleanup and last-minute garlic planting early in the month. Mulch beds and bulbs, protect marginal plants, and finish putting the garden to bed before the cold sets in.
What's at the Farmers Market
November markets transition to the winter season as the outdoor markets close and the indoor winter markets open. The tables are all storage crops now: potatoes, onions, garlic, carrots, beets, parsnips, turnips, celeriac, rutabaga, winter squash, pumpkins, cabbage, and frost-sweetened Brussels sprouts, leeks, and hardy greens. Cold-storage apples and fresh cider remain plentiful through the holiday.
This is a big month for the Vermont specialties that travel and keep: cheese (the farmstead cheddars are holiday staples), maple syrup and confections, honey, eggs, and grass-fed and pasture-raised meats and the season's turkeys. Buy storage crops in quantity now for the winter pantry — keep roots cool, dark, and humid, squash and onions cool and dry, and cabbage in a cold spot — and stock up on cheese and syrup, which keep beautifully and make the heart of the Vermont winter table.
Night Sky This Month
November's long, cold, clear nights bring excellent stargazing as the brilliant winter sky takes over. Taurus with orange Aldebaran and the sparkling Pleiades cluster climbs the eastern evening sky, Orion rises behind them, and the great square of Pegasus and the Andromeda Galaxy ride high overhead. The dim watery constellations of autumn fill the south.
The Leonid meteor shower peaks around November 17, usually a modest shower radiating from Leo in the late-night east, though it has produced spectacular storms in rare years. The cold, dry air and Vermont's dark rural skies — the Northeast Kingdom and high ridges especially — make for crisp, transparent viewing, and the long nights keep the aurora borealis a strong possibility on the northern horizon.
For this year's Leonid peak, moon phase, and planet positions, consult the printable Vermont night-sky guide for your part of the state.
Butterflies & Pollinators
The butterfly season has effectively ended in a Vermont November — the freezes have settled in, and almost nothing flies. On a rare warm, sunny afternoon early in the month, a hardy overwintering adult might still appear: a mourning cloak, eastern comma, or question mark basking briefly before retreating to its winter shelter behind bark or in a woodpile. After that, all of Vermont's butterflies are locked into their overwintering forms across the frozen landscape. Monarchs have completed their migration and are clustering in the Mexican mountains, while the resident species wait out the cold as eggs, caterpillars, chrysalises, or sheltering adults, depending on the species. This is a fine month to plan and prepare next year's habitat — leave the leaf litter and standing stems in place, since they shelter overwintering eggs, chrysalises, and caterpillars, and resist the urge for a too-tidy fall cleanup that would destroy them.
Trees This Month
November strips the Vermont woods bare. The last of the foliage is down — even the late-turning tamaracks have dropped their gold needles into the bogs — and the hardwoods stand stark and gray. The structure of the forest is fully revealed: the smooth gray trunks of American beech, the white of paper birch, the broad crowns of roadside sugar maples, and the dark furrows of the oaks.
Now the conifers come into their own as the only green — balsam fir, red and white spruce, white pine, and eastern hemlock hold the hillsides and ravines through the coming winter. Watch for marcescence: the young beeches and red oaks cling to their pale, dead leaves, which will rattle in the wind until spring. The trees are fully dormant now, their buds set and sealed for winter, and the first lasting snows begin to settle on the bare branches and the dark conifer crowns.
Go deeper with the Vermont guides
The complete Vermont birding, native-plant, wildflower, and night-sky guides — or the whole year in one bundle.
Same month elsewhere: November in Virginia · November in Washington · November in West Virginia