GREENFIELD — With the temperature soaring into the sixties and birds chirping around town, Bill Danielson headed to the Senior Symposia at the Greenfield Community College downtown center. Danielson’s presented a high-energy, interactive lecture titled “Birds in Winter” to about 100 enthusiastic listeners on Thursday.
Unfortunately for Danielson, a weekly columnist in The Recorder, the weather did not perfectly align with his topic — but the crowd did not mind, enthralled by the two-hour discussion on how birds survive throughout the year.
“This was one of the best groups I’ve ever had,” Danielson said after the talk.
As he flipped through his slides of photos he had taken, he challenged his audience to guess which bird was on the screen. The active crowd consistently guessed right on easy and medium level ones, while a few select people were able to figure out the more difficult ones.
The full house learned about how birds survive the winter and what they do during the other seasons to prepare for the sometime deadly winter.
Danielson explained how the price of flight will affect how the bird may live through the winter, detailing how its feather-weight body mass did not complement survival well. Birds have hollow bones, fewer bones, no teeth and most notably no brown fat, which means that birds cannot bulk up like a bear will in the winter.
Massachusetts proves to be a fascinating place to study birds — 323 species can be regularly seen in the Mayflower state, according to a statistic Danielson cited.
Despite such a wide variety of birds hanging out in the state, less than a third actually breed in the state. Danielson joked that Massachusetts is the “Howard Johnson of states — just a rest stop.”
Some birds from Canada will come down here as a relatively warmer, southern location, while others will head south from here and head to countries in South America like Brazil. Regardless, Massachusetts acts as a “migratory bridge” for various breeds of birds.
Danielson also discussed different types of bird seed and feeders. He said that some birds like one type of feeder over the other, but almost all birds love shelled sunflower seeds, saying it’s like a “stick of butter for them.”
The two hour lecture was not only informative for the crowd but also humorous, listening to a speaker that many of them read regularly.
“I can’t claim the same fame as a movie star,” Danielson said.
Two people walked away with a copy of Danielson’s book following a raffle.
Reflecting on his presentation, he said how surviving the winter for birds isn’t quite as difficult as it may have been when he younger.
“Climate change is showing itself,” Danielson said. “Our winters are shorter than I remember as a kid.”
The next Senior Symposia will be Thursday, March 9, 2-4 p.m. “The Gilded Age Police Scandal and the Progressive Era” will be presented by Daniel Czitrom. It is encouraged to reserve your ticket advanced online at www.gcc.mass.edu/creditfree/senior.