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.
By 2080, this already declining Neotropical migrant is projected to have 98 percent of its current summer range shifted away from the current core, but it has potential to expand in the north, according to Audubon’s climate model. Mature hardwood forests that the bird depends on may not exist to the north and the forests expansion may not keep pace with the changing climate.
Are the projected range maps different from the range maps in field guides? Find the answer here.
Each spring this small blue forest bird travels from the northern Andes mountains to the eastern United States to breed. More of a treetop bird than most warblers, the Cerulean usually stays high in tall deciduous trees on the breeding grounds, where it is most easily detected by the male’s buzzy song. The male has the iconic cerulean plumage with white breast feathers, while the female has distinctly yellow undertone to her blue plumage and white lines over each of her eyes. An insectivore, it preys on insects it finds on leaves, occasionally eating fatty plant bits to supplement its diet when it needs extra energy during migration.
Explore more birds threatened by climate change around the country.
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