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.
In foothills oak forests of the New Mexico–Arizona “sky islands” and the Big Bend area of Texas, family groups of Mexican Jays are sure to be found. They’re always on the move, it seems, but only locally; records of vagrants out of range are practically non-existent. The results of Audubon's climate model, showing a loss of 90 percent of current summer range, but large potential gains in both seasons, need to be viewed with caution. A majority of Mexican Jays keep their range in Mexico, outside of the model's analysis, making it difficult to understand what may happen with the species across its entire range. Even modest range expansions may not happen, as climatic shifts may be extremely stressful to this quite sedentary bird.
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.
