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.
This western counterpart of the more widespread Tree Swallow likes it high and dry. Where Violet-green and Tree swallows overlap, the former tends to be found in drier woods, often in the foothills or mountains. The Violet-green is versatile, however. It gets around, and Audubon's climate model suggests the potential for dramatic range shifts in the decades ahead. The model projects a loss of 64 percent of current summer range, with some potential expansion across a fair swath of the Arctic; if there are enough trees for nest cavities, the swallows, forecast to withdraw from today’s core range, may follow. In winter, the Violet-green Swallow might establish in the Gulf Coast states, especially in peninsular Florida and South Texas
Explore more birds threatened by climate change around the country.
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