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.
Famously irruptive, the Red Crossbill may be abundant one year in a given location, and completely absent the next. That combined with its tendency to live in areas that are very sparsely populated by people makes data collection difficult. Audubon's climate model projection for what happens in the mountains of western North America follows the same pattern we see for other mountain-dwelling species: a major contraction as birds are forced to higher elevations by global warming. Its general predictions for severe contractions in summer and winter ranges (64 and 77 percent, respectively) seem broadly plausible.
Explore more birds threatened by climate change around the country.
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