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.
As long as there are conifers, breeding season Red-breasted Nuthatches are contented. They can be found in dry ponderosa pine foothills, in moist boreal bogs, around tree line in the mountains, at sea level, and even in planted Christmas tree plantations. Audubon's climate model shows an overall northward drift of the species’ range, with more disruption and range loss in summer than in winter. This nuthatch is a habitat generalist in winter, so summer climate is the chief concern going forward. How and whether the species adapts in the decades ahead will be determined in large part by conifer forest health in a changing climate.
Explore more birds threatened by climate change around the country.
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