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 Tex-Mex counterpart of the familiar Brown Thrasher has been slowly but surely expanding for several decades north through South Texas, a result generally attributed to climate change already under way. Audubon's climate model forecasts a complex future for the Long-billed Thrasher’s range. A projection that 100 percent of the current summer range may be lost is indeed dire. Suitable climate in winter has potential to expand significatnly, and it is intriguing that there are multiple records of this “South Texas specialty” in recent winters as far north as Colorado. Regardless of the eventual outcome, a dynamic climate future would seem to be in store for this species.
Explore more birds threatened by climate change around the country.
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