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.
With rosy pink wings, an orange tail, and a naked, blotchy, scaly grayish-green head, the Roseate Spoonbill is at once beautiful and bizarre. The species is currently very widespread and numerous in the Neotropics, extending its range south to Argentina. Audubon’s climate model predicts an unstable future for this species in North America, with significant loss of suitable climate space in both summer and winter, though with potential new areas opening up to the north. Populations are declining in some core areas of this species’ summer range, and it remains to be seen how a shifting climate will affect this charismatic bird.
Explore more birds threatened by climate change around the country.
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