Each map is a visual guide to where a particular bird species may find the climate conditions it needs to survive in the future. We call this the bird’s “climatic range.”
The colors indicate the season in which the bird may find suitable conditions— blue for winter, yellow for summer (breeding), and green for where they overlap (indicating their presence year-round).
The darker the shaded area, the more likely it is the bird species will find suitable climate conditions to survive there.
The outline of the approximate current range for each season remains fixed in each frame, allowing you to compare how the range will expand, contract, or shift in the future.
The first frame of the animation shows where the bird can find a suitable climate today (based on data from 2000). The next three frames predict where this bird’s suitable climate may shift in the future—one frame each for 2020, 2050, and 2080.
You can play or pause the animation with the orange button in the lower left, or select an individual frame to study by clicking on its year.
This boreal woodpecker is ecologically similar—but not identical—to the Black-backed Woodpecker. Although there is much overlap in range and habitat, the American Three-toed Woodpecker prefers smaller and sicklier trees than the Black-backed. It can benefit, at least in the short term, from poor forest health. Audubon's climate model shows substantial losses of suitable climate space in the winter. These losses may be offset in part by the woodpecker’s willingness to explore new woodlands, especially those suffering from ill health, an increasingly likely future for much of the boreal forest biome.
Explore more birds threatened by climate change around the country.
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