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, the most widespread and highly migratory sapsucker, inhabits the “northern hardwoods” biome of the northeastern U.S. and southern Canada. In recent years, the Yellow-bellied Sapsucker has enjoyed a range expansion. In New York and Pennsylvania, for example, there have been incursions into areas that were unoccupied a few decades prior. Forest succession is believed to be the prime driver in this sapsucker’s successes. Audubon's climate model forecasts a reversal of the bird’s recent range growth, with an 88 percent loss of current summer range by 2080. The current wintering climate space is expected to remain stable and undergo a potential expansion northward.
Explore more birds threatened by climate change around the country.
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