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.
In summer, much of the continent’s moist, broad-leafed forests are home to the American Redstart. It searches for insects by fluttering at the tips of braches and even by fly-catching, when it flashes the orange patches in its wings and tail. American Redstarts are highly migratory, so they may be well positioned to take advantage of newly suitable areas. In particular, large swaths of Alaska, the Yukon, and the Northwest Territories could become suitable for breeding—but only if the plant and insect communities can also follow the shift in climate, and redstarts follow these shifts.
Explore more birds threatened by climate change around the country.
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