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.
The orange-legged Blackpoll Warbler is famous for having one of the highest-pitched bird songs in the U.S. and Canada. It is one of the most common breeding species in the boreal forest, and flies nonstop from the East Coast of North America to South America, where it spends the winter. Audubon's climate model projects that the Blackpoll Warbler’s summer range is expected to shift by just over one-half and that suitable climatic space may decrease by a tenth. Since this species depends on conifers (mainly spruce) for breeding, any newly available areas will have to contain spruces (and their associated insects) in order for the Blackpoll Warbler to utilize them.
Explore more birds threatened by climate change around the country.
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