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 charismatic species can be found strutting, chicken-like, along the forest floor or large, horizontal branches and logs in rich forests of both the North and the East. Audubon's climate model projects a large (two-thirds) shift northward in potential summer range, with a small total increase in area. A fair bit of this newly climatically suitable breeding area is north of the current tree line, though, and it would have to rapidly develop from tundra into a mature forest before the Ovenbird could take advantage of it. The model’s winter projection is tempered by the fact that most Ovenbirds winter in the Neotropics.
Explore more birds threatened by climate change around the country.
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