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.
Look out over a northern meadow in June and you may see a black-and-white bird fluttering over the grasses, singing a bizarre but cheerful jumble of clicks, buzzes, and trills: the song of a Bobolink. Though Audubon's climate model projects this species ideal climate space may increase by more than half, only one-fifth of the species’ current range will remain stable, and the map clearly shows this with the range shifting noticeably to the north. Fortunately, this grassland species is well adapted to seeking out and colonizing new areas. If grasslands can develop in the new climatically suitable areas, the Bobolink may be able to ride the wave of northward shifting climate space.
Explore more birds threatened by climate change around the country.
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