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 handsome species is by its very nature ready to utilize new habitat. It is strongly dependent on outbreaks of spruce budworm, and has very large clutches (six on average) to take advantage of these unpredictable and ephemeral food sources when and where they do happen to occur. Audubon's climate model shows an 89 percent loss of current summer range by 2080. Spruce budworms need spruce trees, though, so in order for the Cape May Warbler to expand its range, it will need the spruce forests to spread north quickly onto what is now Arctic tundra.
Explore more birds threatened by climate change around the country.
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