The yellow-bellied fairy-fantail, a Himalayan bird, has shifted its range 400 meters higher due to climate change.
Scientists attribute this to rapid warming in the region, a trend mirrored globally as species adapt by moving to cooler habitats, reshaping ecosystems and biodiversity patterns.
They are like pixies of the forest: diminutive and restless, forever displaying aerial acrobatics. But unlike the fairy-tale beings, yellow-bellied fairy-fantails are easy to spot. Their bright yellow bellies and dark, fan-shaped tails tipped with white, make them conspicuous as they flit through tangled shrubs and damp undergrowth beside streams in the Himalayan foothills. In recent years, however, their cheerful calls appear to have grown fainter across their familiar haunts.
The bird, known as Chelidorhynx hypoxanthus in scientific lexicon, is common across foothills and submontane broadleaf forests of the Himalayas, with its range extending into parts of Southeast Asia. Like many mountain birds, yellow-bellied fairy-fantail moves between elevations as the seasons change. But it is gradually shifting its range higher into the mountains, signalling a lasting change in its distribution.
Scientists have recorded an upward shift of nearly 400 metres in the birds’ range, from 1,950 metres above sea level to 2,350 metres. The findings were published in Biotropica in 2022. The researchers suggest that warming in the Himalayas, estimated at 0.06°C a year — much faster than the global average — is pushing birds towards higher, cooler altitudes. Umesh Srinivasan, associate professor at the Centre for Ecological Sciences at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bengaluru, and his colleague Krishna Girish compared the probability of the species occurring at different elevations using eBird, a citizen-science database. They compared records from 2006-10 with those from 2016-19. The probability of yellow-bellied fairy-fantail’s occurrence fell by 46 per cent at lower elevations but rose by 43 per cent at higher elevations. “We did not expect the shift to be so high,” says Srinivasan.
The phenomenon is not confined to one bird species, or to India.
In Australia, the ranges of two marine fish—dogtooth tuna (Gymnosarda unicolor) and rankin cod (Epinephelus rankini)—have expanded by nearly 705 km and 558 km, respectively. A 2025 study published in Diversity and Distributions describes such changes as climate-driven range extensions.
Another study published in the journal People and Nature by British Ecological Society in 2023 notes that climate change has impacted the distribution of 12,000 marine, freshwater and terrestrial species across geographies and conclude that the planet is undergoing the largest redistribution of life for at least tens of thousands of years.
This “great reshuffling of species”, as scientists call it, follows a familiar pattern. As the planet warms and habitats become less suitable, species’ ranges contract at their warmer edges, where temperatures are no longer tolerable, and shift towards cooler regions. “On land, species are shifting either towards the poles or to higher elevations; in the ocean, they are moving to colder water at greater depths,” notes a 2017 study, published in Science journal.
A 2025 study published in Diversity and Distributions examines the shift among marine species, and finds that 91 per cent of the 196 species studied had extended their ranges into areas where they had not previously been documented. Of these, 73 (39 per cent) had been recorded beyond their historical poleward limits, with one range extension reaching 1,250 km. The study attributes the shifts to climate change.
Birds’ summer ranges have shifted northwards by an average of 0.64 degrees latitude over nearly two decades, finds a study, published in Nature Ecology and Evolution in 2025. The study examined 406 bird species native to America and Canada and found that the birds’ shift almost halved their exposure to warming.
In China, scientists have sighted 96 resident bird species in 132 new provinces between 2000 and 2023, which they associate with poleward movements of the birds linked to warming.
In India, the shift is notable among mountain birds. A 2023 study published in journal Diversity projected that between 66 per cent and 73 per cent of bird species in India would shift their ranges to higher elevations or northwards in pursuit of suitable climatic conditions. But this shift may not be uniform for all. As 2024 study published in Global Ecology and Evolution shows smaller bird species in the Indian Himalayas are better able to colonise logged forests, possibly because they could tolerate higher temperatures. Larger species, by contrast, appear to be concentrated in primary forests, as they are 2.3°C cooler and 14.6 per cent more humid than logged forest.
Butterflies, too, are on the move. A study, published in August 2026, examined 1,758 butterfly species …
This article is part of the cover story "Great Migration" published in the November 1-15, 2026 print edition of Down To Earth.
