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 species is commonly seen confidently strutting around parking lots looking for French fries and assembling in livestock pens in much of western North America. Interestingly, the species is inconspicuous and even shy in the eastern portion of its range. Audubon's climate model predicts a significant shift in summer range, as only 29 percent is stable. It also projects a substantial (48 percent) decrease in total suitable climatic space in summer by 2080. The winter projections look much less dire, though Many Brewer’s Blackbirds winter in Mexico, making overall winter projections less complete.
Explore more birds threatened by climate change around the country.
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