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.
The lively Canada Warbler lives in dense tangles of broad-leafed plants. It can often be seen as it sallies out from the dark recesses to catch flying insects. Audubon's climate model doesn’t make any winter projections because Canada Warblers fly very far south to spend winter, often to the Andes of South America. The ingrained drive to migrate great distances may be what, if anything, can save this species from extinction as the breeding range shifts completely by 2080. Thankfully, the Canada Warbler breeds in scrubby, second-growth areas, so it may not take long for its preferred habitat to generate in an expanding (by 34 percent) climate space-if the birds are around to find it.
Explore more birds threatened by climate change around the country.
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