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.
Like the Cape May Warbler, this species benefits from outbreaks of spruce budworm on its breeding grounds in Canada. The Bay-breasted Warbler is already used to a partially nomadic lifestyle: it is common in some infested areas one year, and may be completely absent the next when budworms are not present. This adaptability should make the species more able to take advantage of a projected abundance of ideal climatic space should the adequate plant and insect communities colonize them. But the warblers will have to move quickly: only four percent of their current summer range is stable. Bay-breasted Warblers winter in in Middle America and northwestern South America.
Explore more birds threatened by climate change around the country.
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