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 stately swan breeds in the boreal ponds of the far north, wintering on both coasts. Audubon's climate model projects a 61 percent loss of current winter range by 2080, with a limited potential for expansion in that season. The arctic summer range is also forecast to contract, raising questions about how this migratory bird will adjust to the disruption in both seasons.
Every spring this majestic water bird travels from extensive marshes of the far West and the Atlantic Coast of the United States to the far northern reaches of North America to breed. The adult Tundra Swan migrates with its young from breeding grounds to wintering grounds, sticking together until it returns to its breeding grounds the next year. With black bills and feet and snowy white feathers, this dichromatic beauty is often confused with the Trumpeter Swan, with which it overlaps in some parts of its range. It primarily eats seeds, stems, roots, and tubers of aquatic plants found around the lakes near which it lives, occasionally dining on mollusks.
Explore more birds threatened by climate change around the country.
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