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.
One of the most dramatic avian range expansions in recent history has been that of the Cave Swallow. Formerly unheard of in North America north of Florida and south Texas, the species is now a regular in small-to-medium flocks on fall migration north all the way to New England and the eastern Great Lakes. The birds tend to disappear by early winter, but the model predicts change in that regard. Audubon’s climate model projects a radical shift in winter climate space for this species, with only 6% of the current remaining stable by 2080. However, this species lives mostly south of the United States and Canada, and its prospects in Latin America and the Caribbean are not addressed by the model.
Explore more birds threatened by climate change around the country.
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