The timing of our week-long trip to Death Valley was determined by the school vacation, so we were a bit too early for many of the more interesting returning migrants. I finally added Eurasian Collared-Dove to my list in Death Valley, but the highlight of the trip was the dawn display of Sage Grouse at the Malheur NWR near Burns, OR. We got there very early, when it was just barely getting light enough to see any birds, and were delighted to find a very active lek; I counted 18 males displaying on one side of the road and a few on the other side, which we suspect were younger males who had not yet worked their way into the social structure enough to join the older males. The displays are quite marvelous, as many of you probably know from your own experience; here are these fat male birds with their tail feathers splayed in a semicircle, running around with their breasts extended, looking like men with rich ermine-collared coats, puffing out the air-sacs in their breasts, and sometimes engaging in one-on-one confrontations and chasing each other. Quite marvelous!

We only observed one female, and there were no copulations while we watched for well over an hour. The whole episode raises questions in my mind about the contributions of various males to the next generation, and I'd be grateful if anyone knows of any papers on studies of Sage-Grouse genetics. I'm rather expecting what I would call a kind of Boltzmann distribution of genes, with a few dominant males contributing many of their genes and more and more of the other males contributing fewer genes. But I don't know. I think it's an interesting question, because obviously it's important for the population to maintain genetic diversity, and there will be less diversity if only a few males contribute all their genes while most of the males contribute none.

Burt Guttman
The Evergreen State College
Olympia, WA 98505 guttmanb at evergreen.edu <mailto:guttmanb at evergreen.edu>
Home: 7334 Holmes Island Road S. E., Olympia, 98503