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 drab Dusky Flycatcher is ecologically midway between the similar Hammond’s and Gray Flycatchers, favoring less arid habitats than the latter but less forested habitats than the former. And like its Interior West counterparts, the Dusky is forecast by Audubon's climate model to undergo a potentially vast expansion of the winter climate space into the southeastern U.S., with pine savannahs and disturbed “edge” habitats perhaps particularly propitious. Unfortunately, change in summer is predicted to trend the opposite direction, with a projected 70% decrease in available summer climate space. The Dusky Flycatcher may disappear from current strongholds in mountain meadows and foothills shrublands that receive insufficient precipitation in a changing climate.
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.
