John Powers was wondering what I thought of this article.

Okay. A couple things:

First, their wing bee sounds an awful lot like ours. Which is no great surprise, given you've usually got the same resources available to accomplish the same task. Although, if I remember right, our wing bee (which is one of those hidden, "I'll write it later" entries in early November) only had 11 people. I suspect most western states read their wings the same way, except maybe for Colorado, who probably reads theirs in a heated garage in Fort Collins (but I could be wrong... they may go to the west slope for this task).

We had donuts, too, but no one ate any after they started working on wings. When you're handling grody, slimy, maggot-dropping parts of dead birds, you tend not to want to eat finger food.

Most people switched to the leftover Hallowe'en candy that was provided, since you can kinda just suck the candy out of the wrapper without actually touching anything that is going into your mouth.

Interesting that they use burlap sacks for their wings. We use paper bags for individual barrel collections, which are then consolidated in plastic trash bags. The plastic is bad because it keeps in heat, promoting slime and maggot hatch and growth, but it keeps the wings dry.

Wet wings are worse than slimy maggoty wings.

Maybe it never rains or snows in Idaho?

Second, they must have either a) better publicity people in Idaho, or b) no other news in Idaho. We've been doing this a lot of years here, and no one has ever considered it newsworthy. (Kinda like watching highway crews lay asphalt. I mean, that's what they do, isn't it?)

Third, good to know Tom is still working on sage grouse in his state. Have met him a couple times, and his state's birds are in good hands with him running the program.

And the interesting thought about all this effort, going on in all the states and provinces that still hunt sage grouse, is that everyone will put their numbers together, eventually boiling all this work in western North America down to two numbers:

The ratio of chick wings to hen wings (an indication of production this past summer) and the ratio of yearling to adult wings (an indication of chick survival the previous winter).

Cool, huh?

And lastly, if the Idaho folks are still picking feathers out of their ears weeks after their wing bee, then either:

a) They're reading wings in a windy garage.

b) They're having wing fights to break up the monotony.

c) Water is scarcer than I thought in Idaho, and people there rarely take a shower.

or,

d) Some people are doing things with their wings that we shouldn't discuss in civil company.