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.
One of the world’s most graceful hawks, the Swallow-tailed Kite is a common and widespread bird in much of the Americas, from Argentina north to the southeastern U.S., where, at the edge of its range, it is scarcer. Individuals that nest in the U.S. spend winter in the tropics, so the model makes only a summer projection. At this season, Audubon's climate mode projects a 70 percent loss of current summer range, but an explosive expansion into the southeast. Most of this, however, is shown in places where the species already lives. Swallow-tailed Kites used to breed as far north as the Mississippi Valley and Minnesota. A warming continent may make that a possibility again.
Explore more birds threatened by climate change around the country.
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