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.
Named for its call, which is similar to that of a knife on a whetstone, this diminuitive owl inhabits a diverse variety of forests types during the winter, often preferring those near open water. Audubon's climate model projects a 99 percent loss of current winter range by 2080, predicting climate suitable areas diffusing northward. These changes may find the owl largely absent from the lower 48 during winter by the end of the century. Since this bird calls primarily at night, daytime surveys used in the analysis do not sufficiently document the species for the model to produce a result.
Explore more birds threatened by climate change around the country.
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