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 species is the oriole found commonly in riparian areas (especially willows and cottonwoods) of the western U.S. It hybridizes with the Baltimore Oriole on the Great Plains, and the two were once considered the same species, “Northern Oriole.” The summer range is projected by Audubon’s climate model to be mostly stable and possibly increase, but much of the new climate space far from the rest of the species’ range—in the southeastern U.S.—seems unlikely to be colonized. The model’s winter projection for wintering birds in the United States shows only 5% stable by 2080, but most Bullock’s Orioles winter in central and southern Mexico, outside the range of the model.
Explore more birds threatened by climate change around the country.
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