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.
The stately Mountain Quail is found only in mountains along the Pacific Coast. Like most game birds, the Mountain Quail is non-migratory, so it may have trouble tracking east into potential new winter range projected by Audubon's climate model. On the whole, the model projects a contraction within current ranges during both seasons, with a loss of 58 percent of current summer range and 44 percent of current winter range. As a result, this species will especially need assistance in weathering climate change's effects on its remaining core range within northern California and southern Oregon.
Explore more birds threatened by climate change around the country.
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