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.
Within its limited U.S. range, the Mangrove Cuckoo is restricted—not surprisingly, given its name—to coastal mangrove woodlands. South of the border, though, the bird tolerates a wide variety of woodland habitats. Audubon's climate model forecasts a potential expansion of the amount of suitable climate space in our area, while also projecting a complete loss of the almost imperceptible current summer range in Florida and the Bahamas. At the same time, other climate change models suggest that rising sea levels will threaten mangrove forests in the U.S. Whether the Mangrove Cuckoo adapts to, and perhaps flourishes in, an altered climate is difficult to project. It is unclear whether mangrove trees will be able to migrate with climate change, and whether the trees are even all that important to the cuckoo’s future.
Explore more birds threatened by climate change around the country.
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