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 dry beee-bzzzzzzz song of the Blue-winged Warbler is a characteristic sound of eastern deciduous second-growth forests in the summer. Since they don’t have to wait long for appropriate habitat to mature, Blue-winged Warblers are quick to take advantage of new habitat when it becomes available. And that may be a very good thing, since Audubon’s climate model predicts that suitable climatic space in summer is projected to shift by 95% and decrease by two-thirds by 2080. Blue-winged Warblers winter in Middle America, and thus predictions are not available for the winter season.
Explore more birds threatened by climate change around the country.
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