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.
Audubon’s climate models predict that by 2080, this diurnal owl species could lose 77 percent of its current breeding range. Climate change will disrupt its winter range as well, leaving only 33 percent intact, shifting the remaining 67 percent elsewhere. The Burrowing Owl is already a species of conservation concern because modern agricultural practices have removed the prairie dogs and ground squirrels that it depends on to provide nesting burrows. Artificial burrows might help stem population declines in the coming decades.
This comical little raptor is an easily recognized icon of the grasslands and arid regions of western North America and Florida, and is widespread in the Caribbean, Mexico, Central America, and South America as well. This owl uses a variety of hunting methods. It may pursue large insects by hopping or running across the ground, but it also hunts insects and rodents by swooping down from a raised perch or from hovering flight. Hunting by day or night, it tends to take large insects during daylight in warm weather, small mammals at night or in winter. Lives in loose colonies and nests in underground burrows; while capable of digging its own, it often uses an existing hole provided by prairie dogs, skunks, or armadillos, and isn’t shy about moving into manmade burrows provided by conservationists. It is migratory in northern portions of its range, and inhabits open, treeless areas wherever it’s found—including agricultural fields, golf courses, cemeteries, and airports. Populations are declining in many areas.
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.
