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.
This pink-and-green woodpecker’s habits and habitats in the West are poorly understood. The Lewis’s Woodpecker is loosely colonial, found in orchards, along rivers, and on recent burns. It is notably absent from many areas of seemingly suitable habitat, having declined or disappeared in various places. Audubon's climate model portrays a difficult future for this bird: a 100 percent loss of current summer range and a 61 percent loss of current winter range. Because of this species’ apparent preference for old and diseased groves, forest die-offs—widely expected as a result of climate change—may benefit the species in a way not anticipated by the model.
Explore more birds threatened by climate change around the country.
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