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 small oriole is the lesser-known of the two orioles found in eastern North America. Flocks of hundreds, including rusty adult males, greenish females, and confusing black-throated green young males (often mistaken for warblers), can be seen migrating along the Gulf Coast in April. It prefers to breed in places with a low density of trees, like orchards, hedgerows and even backyards. While Audubon’s climate model predicts that just over one half of the U.S. and Canadian breeding range appears to be stable, with an additional 33 percent of adequate climate space becoming available, the climate space for winter in North America seems likely to change significantly, with only 7% stable by 2080. Most Orchard Orioles winter in the Neotropics.
Explore more birds threatened by climate change around the country.
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