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 relative of the Red-winged Blackbird is nearly endemic to California; only a few scattered, small populations exist outside the state. According to Audubon's climate model, that is likely to remain the case, as the current summer range is forecast to decline by 92 percent by 2080, moving from the Central Valley into the hills of the Coast Range. The larger problem for the Tricolored Blackbird, in fact, may be water usage practices in California. As droughts become the new normal for the Golden State, and the human population demands more water for drinking, desert agriculture, and lawn-watering, it remains to be seen whether there be enough left for the marsh-dwelling blackbirds.
Explore more birds threatened by climate change around the country.
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