Aim: To move towards modelling spatial abundance patterns and to evaluate the relative impacts of climatic change upon species abundances as opposed to range extents. Main conclusions: Our results indicate that projected climatic changes are likely to elicit greater relative changes in species abundances than range extents. For most species examined changes were decreases, suggesting the impacts upon biodiversity are likely generally to be negative. These results also suggest that previous estimates of the proportion of species at increased risk of extinction as a result of climatic change may, in some cases, be under-estimates. Keywords: Biodiversity conservation, bird survey data, birds, climatic change, endemic species, quantitative response surfaces, reporting rates, southern Africa.