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.
An icon of the energy-rich sagebrush deserts in the Intermountain West, this species is poised to lose 71% of breeding range by 2080 and 92% in the non-breeding season, according to Audubon’s climate model. As a bird that relies on specific breeding arenas, how the climatic disruption will affect this bird, already threatened by energy extraction and other uses of public land, is unknown.
The male Greater Sage-Grouse, with his fluffy, white ruff and big, fanning tail, has one of the most remarkable displays in the northwestern United States. For his spectacular mating display, he struts around, puffing out a pair of yellow air sacs on his breast and using them to make a series of throaty, popping sounds to attract females and intimidate other males. During the rest of the year, the sage-grouse is highly social, sometimes forming flocks of hundreds of birds. It forages on leaves, flowers, stems, fruit, and insects; a key component of its diet is sagebrush—hence its name. Sagebrush habitat could be in trouble, though; millions of hectares have been cleared for crop-growing, and other areas are threatened by urbanization, livestock grazing, and invasive, non-native grasses.
Explore more birds threatened by climate change around the country.
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