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.
A migratory species, the Eared Grebe nests in interior marshes of the western US and southwestern Canada. It winters widely in the southwestern U.S. and in Mexico. Although it doesn’t shun saltwater, it does prefer inland lakes. Audubon’s climate model predicts a bleak future of the species in North America, with its summer range completely shifting and contracting by essentially 100%. Thankfully, the species also lives in the Old World (where it is called Black-necked Grebe) and in central Mexico. One hopes that those breeding populations fare better than is projected for the ones in the U.S. and Canada.
Explore more birds threatened by climate change around the country.
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