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 marsh-nesting, pintsized Eurasian gull “invaded” North America in the mid-20th century, and it was thought at the time that the species would increase and expand in the decades ahead. That outcome has not come to pass, however, as the Little Gull remains uncommon at best in the New World. The model, focusing only on winter, forecasts a nearly 300 percent increase in climatically suitable areas for this diminutive gull—especially in the Great Lakes and Canada’s maritime provinces. If additional breeding colonies establish in this continent (perhaps in marshes in the northern Great Plains), there may be abundant suitable wintering habitat for these colonies’ recruits.
Are the projected range maps different from the range maps in field guides? Find the answer here.
Explore more birds threatened by climate change around the country.
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