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.
It’s hard to get a handle on Sedge Wren population status. In winter and on migration, the birds are notoriously furtive. In summer, they’re easier to detect, but they’re also strangely mobile, often attempting a second nesting many miles from the first. On top of it all, they exhibit extreme geographic variation, most of it south of our area. Audubon's climate model forecasts major shifts in climate space for the Sedge Wren with only 29 percent remaing stable both summer and winter, basically the result of substantial climate space becoming available to the north of where it is currently centered. A word of caution is in order: at all stages in the annual cycle, Sedge Wrens require wet tall grass meadows, a habitat constantly in threat from agriculture and development.
Explore more birds threatened by climate change around the country.
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