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 brightly colored sapsucker is currently restricted mainly to the Pacific slope of North America. Audubon’s climate model predicts significant (roughly two-thirds) shifting of climate space for the summer season. Of interest is the availability, even at the present time, of suitable climate space far from the current range—in the northern Great Lakes and Newfoundland. Although the Red-breasted Sapsucker is unlikely to disperse so far, the model reminds us of an important aspect of sapsucker biology: hybridization. All three of these sapsuckers (Red-breasted, Yellow-bellied, and Red-naped) are known to hybridize to some extent where their breeding ranges overlap, and climate-catalyzed range shifts may increase the frequency of gene mixing.
Explore more birds threatened by climate change around the country.
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