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.
If you’ve ever had a potato chip stolen from your picnic table in Florida, it it’s quite likely that a member of this species was the culprit. Audubon's climate model projects a pretty dire scenario for the Boat-tailed Grackle: a 95-percent loss of current breeding range and a 93-percent decrease in climatically suitable areas. And tragically, much of the small amount of newly suitable climate-space is far from the coast. It seems unlikely that this mainly coastal and non-migratory species would begin migrating far inland to places like western Tennessee in order to breed. The Boat-tailed Grackle may need direct human intervention and support to survive into the twenty-second century.
Explore more birds threatened by climate change around the country.
It's easier than you think to make a difference. Become an Audubon member today to help birds facing climate change.
