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 lookalike little cousin of the Greater Yellowlegs currently nests in and around tree line habitat and open boreal forests across Alaska and Canada. Audubon's climate model projects an 83 percent loss of current summer range by 2080, with no potential for expansion and marked move northward. If the species is going to thrive during the summer, the tree line will need to move northward as quickly as the forecast for suitable climate conditions. Suitable wintering areas are expected to expand northward and inland—although not as dramatically as in the case of the similar Greater Yellowlegs.
Explore more birds threatened by climate change around the country.
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