Hi All
I was about to send a comment that while I haven't heard Ruffed Grouse
drumming this autumn, our local Wild Turkeys are displaying. Again, not with
the intensity seen in the spring, but it certainly looks like courtship
behavior (displaying, toms corralling the hens). Then I happened upon a
summary of an article in Avian Biology entitled Why do Black Grouse perform
on lek sites outside the breeding season? It seems that the males who
possessed central lek locations in autumn had higher copulation success the
following spring. The autumn behavior may provide the females with an
opportunity to assess males prior to the breeding season.

BTW, the Journal of Avian Biology has the abstracts of articles posted on
the web. You can find the journal web page at
http://oikos.ekol.lu.se/JAB.jrnl.html

The abstract of the Black Grouse article is at
http://oikos.ekol.lu.se/Jab.30.4.abstracts/2235.html

Interesting question
Cheers
Gail Spitler
Johnsons Landing, BC
mailto:spitler at direct.ca